5/5/25: Trump Says Recession OK, Buffett's Warning, Houthis Strike Israeli Airport & MORE!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 2 (00:30):
Good morning, everyone, Welcome to Breaking Points. Very excited about
this show. We actually have a little bit of a
global flare here, crossing three different continents with the guests
that are going to be joining me. So first off,
very special guest Saga is going to join it for
the A Bloc to talk about the very latest with
regard to tariffs. No baby yet, but he is very
busy and occupied with preparing for the big day, so

(00:52):
he's going to join us off the top. Then we're
going to be joined by special guest host Special celebrity
guest host fuldzerprizing journalist Glenn Greenwald. I want to get
us take off the top of just you know, overall
impressions of the Trump administration that I've got a bunch
of news I want to dive into with him. This
hoofy strike on the Israeli Ben Gurion Airport, the boycott's

(01:14):
bill that actually was pulled, a very rare apac l here,
So that's an interesting one to get into. There was
a big deep dive into John Fetterman's mental and physical health.
Almost appears like another democratic cover up of his specific situation.
His staffers are speaking out, so a lot to get
into there. Claudia Scheinbaum is hitting back at Trump after

(01:37):
he offered to what an offer to send our military
in to Mexico to fight the cartels. She is saying
no thanks to that. At the same time, the Trump
administration is wang designating suspected gang and cartel members as
enemy combatants, potentially another path for them to attempt to
deport people with no due process. So very interested to
get Glenn's take on all of those things. Also going

(01:59):
to have a journalist join us from Australia Australia has
just sort of followed the footsteps of Canada with their
election results. The Liberal the center left party coming from
behind to really secure a landslide victory. The Prime Minister there,
Tony Albanisi, is going to he was re elected his
opponent actually again, like Canada, Canada not only lost the

(02:25):
overall party election but also lost his own seat. And
America and reaction backlash to Trump's policies has a lot
to do with that. So really looking forward to getting
the view from down under there. Let's go ahead and
get to it. Very excited to announce a special edition
of Breaking Points. Let's put this up on the screen. Guys,
We've got the Baby Points edition. Sager is able to

(02:48):
join us for the top of the show here as
he navigates his life heading into a very very important day.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It is lovely to see you, my friends.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Thank you for the special graphic that honestly I needed
that I needed. Thank you to the audience, and I
just want to say this before we even get started.
Thank you to the whole team, to everybody. It has
been just an absolute roller coaster over here in the
ingety household as we're dealing with the medical system and
everything else, and just knowing that the team has my

(03:19):
back and everybody else are producing a great show for everybody.
It's just it's incredible. So seriously, thank you, especially the
premium subscribers and others who enable this. And I am
very glad to be able to hear to talk about
tariffs and specifically about baby strollers. It's a very relevant
thing in my life right now. And so yeah, I
think that's a good hook.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
What was Trump's quoting was like everything's going down except
the things that they carry the babies in.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Or something like that.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, which by which he means the strollers. Right today
is May fifth, actually where one of the largest stroller
companies here in the United States, called up a Baby,
will actually be enacting all of its new price hikes
part of the it's caused mass panic amongst a lot
of my friends and others who are having children. So yeah,

(04:04):
it's really great. And in addition, I'm sure that we'll
play the clip of Trump. You know, we don't know
the gender Jillian and I of what we're having, but
if it is a girl, I guess I will only
be able to buy was it three beautiful baby dolls,
and because little girls notoriously do not need more than
two or three little dolls. But yeah, okay, let's get

(04:26):
to them.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, and I'm sure the Trump children, you know, they
didn't have any access.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Surely, of course not. They never had to tell more
than they need. Have you seen the photo of Milania
with literally a gilded baby stroller? So yeah, it must
be nice. It must be nice not to have to
worry about these things we are currently. I mentioned this
last time, Crystal, I'll say to you, Jillian and I
are spending our free time researching diaper supply chains just

(04:51):
to make sure that we're going to be able to
have access. That's just a really great addition to our
new family life.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
You had anything else to worry about, Sager, So plenty
of time on your hands, no other problems or challenges
to worry about. So I'm sure that's how you want
to spend your time. All right, let's get to We've
got a couple of interesting comments here from Trump from
this interview he did with Christen Welker over at NBC.
This first one where he seems to indicate sort of
downplay the possibility of a recession and what the impact

(05:20):
of the recession would be let's go ahead and take
a listen to that.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
I want to know what you think about that. Are
you comfortable with the country potentially dipping into a recession
for a period of time if you are able to
achieve your long term goals?

Speaker 6 (05:34):
Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say, well,
I like to tell you something else. Some people on
Wall Street say that we're going to have the greatest
economy in history. Why don't you talk about them? Because
some people on Wall Street say this is That's what.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
I'm getting at.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
That's what I'm getting at.

Speaker 6 (05:48):
Though there are many people on Wall streets say this
is going to be the greatest windfall ever happened.

Speaker 5 (05:54):
And that's my question this long term. Is it okay
in the short term to have a recessions?

Speaker 6 (06:01):
Look, yeah, everything's okay. What we are I said, this
is a transition period. I think we're going to do fantastic.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
On the Trump economy.

Speaker 6 (06:11):
It partially is right now, and I really mean this.
I think the good parts of the Trump economy and
the bad parts of the Biden economy because he's done
a terrible job. He did a terrible job on everything.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Your thoughts soccer, Yeah, the Trump economy or the good
parts of the Biden stock market, and actually it will
remain in the Biden stock market until it starts to
go up again. It's just preposterous now at this point,
it is pretty crazy to be almost a month more
than a month actually now at this point removed from
Liberation Day, and for all of us to actually try

(06:43):
and take a step back and realize, like what has
now happened. We have a massive like market volatility. In fact,
though the US economy is suffering one of the greatest
like supply shocks in American history, almost comparable to COVID,
except this is a self induced supply shock. And I
know we've been warning about the shipping drop and how

(07:04):
that wall manifest in terms of shelves and all of that,
and that's just going to be ever present here because
it's going to take months for us to see some
of this. And already we're seeing this like crazy run
on iPhones, on strollers, on other importable goods or important
goods like things like television's consumer electronics. But what about
six months from now. I'm also thinking about the fact

(07:25):
that we're in May, so you know, six months from now,
whenever we're in the holiday period of whenever people are
going to be shopping for gifts, think about Cyber Monday
and all these other things. Q four one of the
most important quarters in all of retail. Just consider, you
know what those recession comments and how they can come
back to bite you. It is also fascinating because Trump's
simultaneously is a student of like some political history. Now,

(07:48):
he recently was talking about and texted new Ganggrich about
read my lips, no new taxes. This was the infamous
line that's sunk Judge George H. W. Bush. I mean,
if you don't even think about your political fortune, you know,
somewhat in the future for the Democrats in the midterm elections,
it's very obvious that that recession clip and others of
him talking about this are going to be massively impactful

(08:11):
for Republican chances. I know that there's a takeout there
that Trump doesn't care about the midterms, But from a
purely self interested level, it's like, dude, do you want
to spend over one hundred and fifty million dollars in
legal fees because you Pete Hegseth, Mike Wall, all these
other guys like every elon, every you know, potential mini
scandal or any of this other thing. You are going
to spend your ass living before Congress and adjudicating contempt

(08:35):
and you know, like subpoenas from the House of Representatives
for your entire presidency. This is a tale as old
as time from I remember Benghazi and all this other
nonsense that we were forced to live through. I mean,
this is just classic waves of an administration. But I
mean the only alternative is this is what he believes,
and there is just no shaking, you know, his foundational belief.

(08:57):
Every once in a while you're allowed to rushing into
the Oval office and to cause the Trump truth or
whatever that will implement a ninety day pause. By the way,
where are the deals?

Speaker 7 (09:07):
You know?

Speaker 1 (09:07):
I know, I've been gone for a while, but everyone
said a checking where's the deal?

Speaker 7 (09:11):
I was talented?

Speaker 1 (09:13):
I know I haven't. I'm aware, and that's my point.
You know, every morning I checked the Wall Street Journal
of Financial Times at the very least, just checking for something.
Even in India, Japan, the European Union, in fact, it
feels like every other country is doing better than we are.
I just read this morning European traders had their best
year in a decade, and that foreign traders and others

(09:36):
all trading off of the volatility and the currency shocks
from the United States. So it seems like everybody else
seems to be doing it actually pretty well. It seemed
like a major shock to or actually politically, I know,
you guys are covering to Australia today, it's like, oh cool.
You know, it's like you're basically ushering in like global centrism.
I'm sure that was definitely the project of the Trump administration.

(09:58):
So it's just been a colossal failure, stupidity predicted. And
it would be funny if there were not millions of
people to be affected. Like I mean, the stroller thing
is just a minute example, you know, for someone like me,
But I mean, you know, it's only what one of
the most important periods of your entire life, and you know,
just to think about people who are struggling, who are

(10:20):
out there who need a stroll. You know, I've talked
about this. You're not allowed to leave the hospital if
you don't have a car seat. It's okay, good luck.
Over ninety four percent of them come from China, so
if you're having a kid six or seven months from now,
I know you're probably not thinking like this, I would
buy one today, and you know, if you can't afford
it or something like that in the future, you're going
to have to try and buy secondhand. That's not really

(10:41):
something that I want people to have to do, right,
And so these are really bad things that you're inflicting
on people's lives.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, And you know my view is, first of all,
I think they just assumed that the terms are going
to be a loss, and it is what it is.
And for Trump, I think, yes, he likes tariffs and
he likes power, and tiffts give him the ultimate power,
you know. I think he even the comments in the
Time magazine interview he was like sort of delighted that
he had upended the election in Canada. He didn't care

(11:11):
that it was in service of the opposite of his ideas,
supposed ideological project.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
He just liked that it revolved around him.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
And I think that, you know, he made other comments
in that interview about how he's like the you know,
controls the world effectively, and I think that's the way
that he feels about it, is he loves making the
whole world dance to his tune, and that's really more
than anything to me what this is all about. But
we did, as you mentioned before, we did get some

(11:41):
new guidance from the dear Leader about what sorts of
toys and in what quantities and school supplies our children
should be content with. Let's go ahead and take a
listen to Trump on that.

Speaker 5 (11:52):
You are at your cabinet meeting. You said, quote to
quote when you said, maybe the children will have two
dolls instead of thirty dollars, and maybe the two dollars
will cost a couple of bucks.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
More than they would normally.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices
to go up.

Speaker 8 (12:08):
No.

Speaker 6 (12:08):
I think the tariffs is going to be great for
us because it's going to make us rich.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
But you said some dolls are going to cost more.
Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices go up.

Speaker 6 (12:16):
I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's eleven
years old, needs to have thirty dollars. I think they
can have three dollars or four dollars. Because what we
were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a
trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
When you say they could have three dollars instead of
thirty dollars, are you saying Americans could see empty store shelves.

Speaker 6 (12:41):
No, No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they
don't need to have thirty dollars, they can have three.
They don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils,
they can have five.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Five pencils.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I get the good needs is the doll allotment has
been increased from two to a max of four.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
So progress there. Yeah, I mean to borrow from Richard Nania.
Like this is maga maoism, Like this is literal maoism
in terms of yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Well, actually I was thinking about that because I saw
a lot of people saying like this is this is
like communism, but at least in communism, the idea was
like you're going to take from the wealthier people make
everybody equal. This is like we're going to take from
the poor to make the rich richer, and like make
sure that Donald Trump and his oligarchic cartel are you know,

(13:25):
wildly wealthy. Although you know, I see me shaking your head.
It is true that the billionaires are getting hurt here
now too. But the idea is if you're one of
the insiders, you're going to be able to consolidate even
more power because who's going to get decimated by these tariffs?
Amazon and Walmart, they're going to have a bumpy path.
They're going to make it through small and medium sized businesses.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
They're going to be destroyed. You know, I don't disagree.
I was just I was just going to say that
that actually was the net effect of the Soviet system,
which is, yeah, everything's great, but actually, irl, what happens
is a bunch of commissars and all those other people.
So actually, I think the Mao analogy is accurate because
really what it was is that Maoism the cultural revolution others,
if we used ideology, I've got a good mouth book

(14:05):
behind me actually, which was used as a tool of
ideology to purge anybody who was not sufficiently like you know,
who is not sufficiently like worshiping the culture personality around him,
including some of the most effective people like Deng Jahouping
and others, while cultivating this era of stupidity where it

(14:26):
was all supposed to be in service of like the
Great Cultural Revolution, of the peasant class and then that
effect was like famine while a lot of these other
people either lived large or a mass large amounts of power.
I think the Soviet system very similar. So the stupidity
and the corruption you know, within it, and it's kind
of baked in I think to the general ideology. But yeah,
I mean, really what it comes down to is this

(14:47):
is antithetical. I think to a lot of the reason,
not only the reasons why trump Ism, if there is
such a thing, was popular. I mean, if we really
do think about why Trump even won the overall election,
people were not just a set about inflation or up
set about immigration. I think in general, you know, the
American spirit has a lot of social libertarianism to it,

(15:09):
where the idea is is that we don't want to
tell you what to do, just go ahead and live
your life. We want to make everybody rich and or
better off so that they can be able to do
whatever it is they want to do. And so it's
pretty different. You know, whenever the president is telling you
the number of pencils that your child is allowed to
have at school or the number of toys that you're allowed, like, look,
you know, maybe he's right crystally you know a lot

(15:30):
better than I do. Maybe kids don't need a bunch
of different Barbie doll But what if you want to
buy it for him? Okay, you know what if you
know I already know that. If you know, if you
have a daughter and she's five and she's asking me
for if I have the money, it's happening. All right,
that's probably a bad thing. But like I'm going to
buy it, and that's that. It's one of those where
it's kind of grotesque, you know, to be lectured by

(15:50):
the leader of the country as to what you're allowed
to spend your hard earned money on now. And and
you know, just finally, because now I've been beating this
Trump for a month. If we wanted to start a
program of building children's toys which are super safe with
no lead, where we know exactly where they're made, and
we're supporting like small businesses and people who are craftsmen

(16:14):
and others who have been working on this for a
long time, and it's somebody's dream, you know, to be
able to open a store and they get a tax
credit and all that, I would be all for it.
I would say that's fantastic. It's great, let's get it
out of China. Let's make sure that these are actually
to a very very high safety standard, unlike many children's
toys that we have right now. But that's not what's happening,
right you know, It's like instead, you're just cutting off
from them, and then you're not really helping anybody over here.

(16:37):
And in fact, you know who's the best off, Like
you said, it's Amazon, and it's Walmart or any of
these other places which are just gonna use loopholes to
be able to stock pilot inventory. Or you know, right now,
Walmart is actually discounting even though they're eating a ton
of loss. Why to nuke everybody else because they can
afford it. They have a tons of on their balance sheet.
Same with Amazon. I don't know if you I talked

(16:57):
about this on Wednesday. Amazon literally told it's we're not
accepting price increases, right, which, yes, what You're screwed if
you have a supplier you need to sell on Amazon.
Good luck, team man, You're done. I'm already starting to
see it. A few little products that I buy no
longer available on Amazon. Oh wow?

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Really yeah, I mean, listen, on the critique of consumerism,
there is a version of this I am open to, right,
I wish we had a less sort of disposable society
where you know the number of toys and books and
clothes and whatever that just gets like, you know, basically
tossed or or you know, taken to goodwill or the
op shop or whatever. There's you know, we don't really

(17:35):
value having a few quality, perhaps locally made things.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
But that is not that is not what.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
We're talking about here, right, there's no other part of
that agenda that exists. In fact, dose just making sure
we don't have safety regulators to make sure there's no
lead in the toys. They're rolling back the provisions with
regard to toxic chemicals, et cetera. So yeah, it's just
like suffering for the sake of Trumpian power plays. This

(18:04):
is an interesting and sort of complicated one. Let's put
this up on the screen. We've been covering Timu and
San and they're the way they're impacted by the TERRAF.
So in addition to everything that's been done, Trump is
now rolling back that deminimous loophole exemption that you have
had your eye on for a while, Sager, that basically
lets these low cost producers ship directly to consumers here

(18:28):
in US, and so long as the amount is under
eight hundred dollars, they have been, you know, been able
to bypass any sort of customs, imports, duties, et cetera
that is being rolled back. It's going to have a
huge impact on Timu and Shan, but also it's going
to have a huge impact on Google and Meta and
any sort of online platform that depends on ad revenue,

(18:52):
because the numbers around this are quite astonishing. They'd flooded
Google in the US with ads for the goods they sell.
Those started to disappear from the platform in April. On
April fifth, t accounted for nineteen percent of all US
ads the almost twenty percent of all US ads displayed
on Google Google Shopping.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Now that number is zero.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Shean also went from around twenty percent to zero by
April sixteenth. So there will be significant reverberating effects not
just with T moon she In, but with the entire
economy that revolves around advertising revenue, including yours.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Truly. Yeah good low, yeah, good luck. Look, I'm for
the Dominus thing. I'm for you know, Team Shoe. I
think they're bad. I just think they're empirically bad. I
think they're bad, bad for the American consumer. I think
they're bad for the way that they use the Dominimus loophole.
It effectively does punish people in the US. But again,
let's get back to the point. It's not about you know,

(19:44):
the te moon she and bad overnight cut them off
good or not let them stay. It's about plan. It's
about the fact, like you just said about advertising, it's
like a fast fashion or making sure that people have
access to bigger things or other things to be able
to buy. You know, there's like a cultural component obviously

(20:04):
the government can't get deeply involved in. But more broadly,
the other thing with the Trump administration is you just
never know if this is real or not, Like is
this part of some sort of concerted strategy because de Minimus,
we've covered here now for several months, has been on
and off approximately five or six times. So if you're
a company, like or anybody else who's thinking about, like,

(20:25):
oh my gosh, tema machine's going away, maybe we can start.
I'm trying to think, what was that brand called American Apparel,
something similar like a not fast fashion, but like a
mid tier fashion band made in America. They had quite
a bit of success actually, if I recall. But the
point is that if you wanted to bet, you know,
on building something here on Sore, how do you know
that overnight Temy and Shean are not going to be

(20:45):
able to come back. Look at the TikTok thing. It's
literally a piece of legislation that Trump just decided that
he's not going to enforce. Whether you like this or not,
this is a ridiculous way to make policy. And the
whole point is that it's just freezes investment all across
the US. It punishes us consumer. They're seeing only things
that are subtracted. There's nothing being added. There doesn't feel

(21:06):
as if not only there's a steady you know, handed
at the wheel, but they're just generally thrown into complete chaos.
And that is just not really a way to live
for people who are not you know, it sounds stupid
about shopping or whatever, but you know, like you said,
twenty percent reduction in Google AdSpend that has some pretty
reverberating effects across the economy. Take us out of it.

(21:28):
I mean, do you know how many I would venture
to say that almost every American who owns stock probably
owns some share of Google that's fifty sixty percent, whether
you own it for this S and P five hundred
or not. Think about if you live in an area
which relies on Google, they build you know, data centers
or anything. So that's the other thing is about the
downstream overall economic effect of what this stuff looks like,

(21:52):
is you know, their fiftieth and sixtieth order consequences to
just sucking all of this money out of the US economy.
And I think that's what I really object to.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Here Griffin was saying, it'd be pretty ironic of Trump
and I'm destroying the US podcast class.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
That would be kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I mean, you know it's funny though, because I think
they would probably still be fine. Unfortunately, the sports gambling
industry is still roaring, and they're the ones who are
really propping them up along with the discount biagra pills,
So I don't think they are going anywhere.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, all right, well we'll have to wait for the
next maw it'ed move from Trump to go after those industries.
Let's go and take a listen to the guy who
runs the port in LA because there is perhaps no
one who would have his finger on the pulse, more
of what is headed our way and more importantly, what
is not headed our way. Right now, let's go ahead

(22:46):
and take a listen to what he has to.

Speaker 9 (22:47):
Say about a third of the import volume, which means
give or take about fifty twenty foot equivalent units gone off.
The arrivals coming in next week.

Speaker 10 (22:57):
So from next week is when you expect to say
this really hit.

Speaker 9 (23:00):
That's correct, and that matches up the announcements back on
April second, then on April eighth, a little bit of
a change on everybody ex China, Mexico, Canada, and those
arrivals are coming at us this weekend.

Speaker 10 (23:12):
Well, of course, dedicate time to you'll pull up. I'm
just wondering how you anticipate in this rose and ripples
through the economy from here, how it hits trucking when
this turns up on the shaft. What's the distance the
time from when you see a drop off in volume
and when we as consumers say the shortages.

Speaker 9 (23:27):
So CEOs are telling me hit the pause button, right,
I'm not going to import any more at these kind
of prices. Let's wait and see. I don't know if
it's going to be two hours, two days, or two
weeks till I get some clarity, then hiring off the
table for right now, capital investment pause, and the retailers
are telling me that realistically, with even the ten percent,

(23:48):
I'm going to have to pass it on to the consumers.

Speaker 11 (23:50):
So how much is this really coming from all over?
It's not just about China. This is about really global
trade coming to a standstill until there is a much
greater degree of certainty and a much lower terror freight
than even the baseline that's been put out there.

Speaker 9 (24:03):
Yeah, when I was last with you, at least I
said global trade's going to slow, economies will follow, and
that's exactly what we're seeing. Back in November, so many
of us were wringing our hands about four percent inflation.
We've just added ten percentage points to imports coming out
of Southeast Asia for our port and these unbelievable numbers
out of China.

Speaker 11 (24:20):
How much are you going to see a real decline
in dock workers if this goes on?

Speaker 12 (24:25):
Yeah, this is the question.

Speaker 9 (24:26):
So the trucker hauling four or five containers today, next
week she probably hauls two or three. The dock workers
are no longer going to see overtime and double shifts.
They're going to probably work less than a traditional work week.
Starting right off the bat, every four containers meet a job,
so when we start dialing this back, it's less job opportunity.

Speaker 11 (24:45):
And what happens if we get a deal.

Speaker 9 (24:47):
If we get a deal, it's going to take about
a month.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Let me walk you through that real quick.

Speaker 9 (24:51):
About two weeks to get the ships repositioned around these
major ports from chin Dau to Shahai to jah Men,
load up all those containers, and then another two weeks
to steam across the Pacific to get to us. This
is important because now we're talking about the spring and
summer fashion, so we're kind of at a crux here
that we've got to have something pretty quick and back
to school, which is I think very critical when it

(25:13):
comes to political pushback for this administration.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's interesting what he says. They're not just about the timing,
but he's like this, we're not just talking about China here,
and you know, let's just put our no up before
I get your reaction to all of this saga. Who
was talking about, you know, Japan. Originally the idea was
that we're going to have this grand encirclement strategy. We're
going to use Japan to agree to this to help

(25:36):
to isolate China. Fast forward today, Japan is so antagonized,
their publicly calling US proposals absolutely unacceptable and are threatening
for the first time ever, and on national TV to
sell their holdings of US treasuries as a tool of
economic warfare against the US, in other words, of policy
intended to isolate China as achieving the exact opposite outcome.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yes, I mean I was flagging a lot. I could
see that's coming from a mile away, you know. I
saw the Japanese Prime Minister in the parliament and I
was like, man, this is not good. Whenever you start
hearing that type of rhetoric. These are very careful and
reserve people. They know exactly what they're doing. That also
as an indication not only of how they're feeling it
at the governmental level, but broadly how they're seeing, you know,

(26:19):
being able to push back against the US as a
democratic thing, which has really not happened in a long
time in Japan's from an it's very isolating, you know,
And so not only is about a failure of policy,
but it also does show you that the amount of
uncertainty now injected into global trade is such that the
overall effect for the US consumer it takes months to
shake out. And I think the most interesting part of

(26:40):
the port of La Ceo there was him saying even
if it were there was a pause on everything, that
it would still take a month for it to come back. So,
I mean, what is that like a lost quarter of
overall US GDP? Like, that's a lot and we just
had what the negative print on the number, and it's
a little complicated, and I know you guys have talked
about that in terms of the because a big part

(27:00):
of is a number of imports and things like that.
So it's not perhaps as catastrophic as people may think.
But I'm very curious to see what that next figure
looks like with this overall drop in trade. And I
also feel for a lot of those dock workers, truck
workers and others people who really I mean, they were
going through it already, and you know it's already in

(27:21):
terms of the decline, but you know, trucking, what is
it the number one industry for non college educated men
in the US be able to earn over one hundred
thousand dollars per year it's why it's one of the
reasons is the most popular industry. Get paid a decent
amount of money, you get to set relatively some of
your own hours, and you have a decent amount of freedom.
This is just takes it away from you and that's

(27:41):
financially devastating, you know, for people, and then yeah, you're
going to start looking at other things. I saw.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
I wish I could remember the numbers, but the percent
of people who live in and around LA who are
somehow employed by the port ecosystem is just massive. And obviously,
I mean LA is the biggest port in the country,
but Glint is also huge. I mean, we have a
number that would be massively impacted. And frankly, I think
a month too. Like let's say there's a deal the

(28:09):
executive director there are the Port of La saying would
take a month to sort of shake things out based
on COVID, I feel like that's kind of optimistic because
there were so many reverberating impacts that, you know, because
once you the truckers aren't getting enough work, then they
leave and they go to other jobs, and then you
don't have enough truckers, and then you know the dock
where like, there's a whole compounding impacts that are hard

(28:29):
to anticipate in advance, So I feel like a month
is kind of a best case scenario, assuming that everything
goes relatively smoothly in being able to unwind all of this.
Two quick indications here before we moved onto Warren Buffett.
We can put up McDonald's on the screen Burger Chains
saying that terris are hurting sales after reporting largest decline

(28:49):
since the pandemic. Apparently also their like biosque situation in
the stores is also a big flop, which I would
agree with. It takes so much freaking longer to order
on those dang kios than just telling someone your order,
So please bring back to human beings. In addition, Apple
they say that the terriffs could cost them nine hundred
million dollars almost a billion dollars just this quarter, and

(29:12):
Tim Cook says there's actually some extraordinary factors that make
that number less this quarter than it could be in
quarters moving forward, and Sager remember Apple is one of
the companies that has been a beneficiary of some of
the larger exemptions to the tariff policy, so this is
also being seen as a pretty dire indicator.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah. Well, I think one of you guys said that.
It was like, this is one of the best managed
companies in the world, with a shit ton of balance
sheet cash, and you know, they're they're at global experts,
at trade navigation and all of us. And for them
to be, you know, ripping a billion a quarter, that's
not a joke, not in terms of not only in
terms of their inventory and how difficult it will be

(29:52):
for them to navigate. But I think the point was, now,
multiply that by the average fortune five hundred CEO and
you're like, oh, well, this is one of the best
companies in the whole world. Then just think about what
that's going to mean for so many others. I don't, Yeah,
because they had already shifted.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
They had already shifted a significant amount to India and Vietnam,
I believe, so they were sort of anticipating this and
even so and got their exemptions because they're politically connected,
and even so taking this kind of a hit. Let's
go ahead and move on to Warren Buffett, of course,
legendary investor. He just announced that he is retiring. I mean,
what's he's in his nineties, so certainly, yeah, he's certainly

(30:32):
put in his time. We can go ahead and take
a look. He got a ten minute standing ovation at
the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting where this was announced. You
can see, you know, see everyone standing there for him,
and he made some interesting comments during his remarks here
in addition to announcing his retirement on the trade war
and on global trade in general. Let's go ahead and

(30:53):
take a listen to that.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
We want a prosperous world. Eight countries with nuclear weapons,
including a few that are what I would call quite unstable.
I do not think it's a great idea to try
and design a world where a few countries say, ha,
we've won and other countries.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Are envious.

Speaker 4 (31:21):
So the main thing to do is not trade should
not be a weapon. And the United States, United States,
we've won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important
country starting from nothing two hundred and fifty years ago.

(31:44):
There's nothing that anything like it. And it's a big
mistake in my view when you have seven and a
half billion people that don't like you very well, and
you got three hundred million are crowing in some way
about how well I've done.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
And soccer I don't know that Warren Buffett's views on
trade are exactly the same as my views on trade.
But I do think that last point he makes it's
a really key one, just in the way that this
particular trade war has been executed. He's like, you're making
the whole world hate you. The whole world, You're uniting
the entire globe against you. Like this is not a
good idea.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
I respect Warren Buffett. He's a classic, you know, neoliberal
free trader, and he profited quite a bit off of
the of the Chinese economy and all of this. So
I mean, look, I don't want to you know, just
besmirch or whatever, who I think is a very interesting man.
But yeah, we'll put his views on trade aside. He
is not incorrect, you know, broadly about not only the

(32:41):
chaos and the isolation that has happened as we just
discussed with Japan. But you know, we also should look
to his financial strategy for if anything, let's disregard maybe
his like broad ergy of political views, and we can
say is definitely an expert in making money. If anybody
ever wants, there's a great book about it him. I
think it's called Snowball, which I read that and several

(33:01):
years ago fantastic book just broadly about like who this
guy is, what makes him tick, the strategy behind all
of it. It's actually really Warren's life tracks the development
of the modern US economy, and since he's one of
the greatest investors on paper ever, you know, seeing his
mind kind of work through those decision points at those
critical moments in US economic history is just a great

(33:22):
way for not only to understand Balfit, but also to
understand kind of everything that's happened. But to take this
out of it, look at what he is currently betting on,
and his mind still works quite well. They're sitting on
hundreds of billions of dollars in cash because of uncertainty,
and that is a giant red signal right to the

(33:43):
overall US, to the equities market, to the banking sector,
to the consumers, investment investors, and others for how they
should be thinking in terms of whether they should outlay anything.
And so that kind of hold back for where if
you have the cash, you should just go ahead and
keep it. That's going to have big impacts no matter what,

(34:04):
because people look to Berkshire Hathaway to make their own
investment decisions. And I think that actually is the most
critical part of Warren Buffett, at least in his importance
right now.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, no, you can't deny his track record in you know,
investing and seeing trends and anticipating them, et cetera. And
we can put put this element up on the screen, guys.
This is something we've been tracking and covered previously, but
it's worth updating you on Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway just
announce they now hold a record three hundred and forty

(34:34):
eight billion dollars in cash.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Buffett's cash balance is up two hundred and thirty nine billion.
He has net sold stocks for ten straight quarters. Their
t bill balance is actually fifty six per cent higher
than the FED itself, and that cash pile is now
larger than the market cap of giants like Bank of
America and Coca Cola. Now we don't know for sure

(34:59):
whether there were any sales, you know, during this period
recent period of market well not sales purchases during this
recent period of market volatility to draw down on that
cash balance, but based on the comments he made at
that meaning, it seems like he's still very unimpressed with
the direction of the market.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary. And again, like people should take
just general notice that one of the greatest investors doesn't
think that this is a good time to buy and
always holding a decent amount of cash, and you know,
just broadly, and I think we have this element as well,
just about all of these different billionaires who are disclosing
plans to sell billions of dollars in their own stock.

(35:40):
Bezos here selling about five billion in Amazon stock, and
I believe the same is the case for some of
the other major tech CEOs who have taken a massive
hit to their balance sheet. So yeah, they're taking money
off the table and they're hoarding cash. Just like Warren Buffett.
We've talked about this if in an era of uncertainty,
businesses hoard cash. When you hoard cash, you're not making
investment or hiring employees or doing any other different things

(36:03):
that you may do. And not good. Not good.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, No, that's that's exactly right. And I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
I'm sure you saw because you I think read all
of Weisenthal's things as I do. But his theory is
that part of why the market hasn't crashed as much
as you may expect, although I will say, looking at
ten thirty am right now, it is down this morning,
but is because retail has been so conditioned to buy
the dip that they are actually buoying the market, and

(36:30):
that if you look at the much larger institutional investors,
they are all extremely barish. And I think you know,
Berkshire Hathaway here and Duck Bezos and other billionaires would
be sort of emblematic of that.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't fault anybody for buying the
dipper dollar cost averaging or you know, not making any
big decison or not like deviating. I think on the
institutional side, they also, as we're talking about just broadly,
like they have investors, or they have shareholders, or they
need to be able to plan for the future, They're
not thinking about it similarly, and so for them, the problem,

(37:05):
you know, the retail guys always discover is that those
large forces are much more market moving and important than
you are. You know, with your one hundred dollars a
month or whatever that you're auto buying the S and
P five hundred. And this is the problem, you know,
with major capital and their control is that the hey
are the ones you decide the fate really for all
of us, they're major decisions and so whether we like

(37:25):
it or not, they're the ones who are really pulling
the strings here.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, that's true. I have to live in the reality
as it currently exists.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Sager.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Lovely to have you, sir, Great to see you. Everybody
is very excited about you being daddy to be and
thinking a lot about you and Jillian as you go
through this.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Thank you guys. Yeah, just shout out to any other
expected parents out there. It's not easy. Do your own research,
stand up for yourself, be your own advocate, and just
make sure that you know you're taking everything with a
grain of salt and making sure that you're paying attention.
That's what I really hope lock in. But yeah, we're
we're doing our best hanging on and I'll let everybody
know as soon as I can when things are.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
In motion, all right.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
And lastly, we're bringing in, you know, some celebrity guest
hosts to try their best to fill your shoes, and
we're about to. I'm about to bring in Glenn Greenwald,
who scarcely needs an introduction. Pulled surprise winning journalist, hosts
of System, Update on Rumble, etcetera. Any advice for me
or for him as we move into the oh, celebrity
guest host portion of the show.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
I think just change things up. I think that's one
of the most fun things. Whenever you have different guest hosts,
song with different perspectives, or different hosts or any other things,
you know, it can just be u it can be
something new, and I think that's refreshing sometimes, especially in
a crazy time like this.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
All right, Sager, go take care of what you need to,
and hopefully we'll see again soon.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Bye, Glenn Greenwald, Welcome, Thank you for doing this with us.

Speaker 7 (38:51):
I'm so happy to be here. I just wanted to
say I'm very well prepared. I actually I don't know
if you studied it, but I have a big believer
in method acting, and I spent the last few days
navigating life as Saga, like I dressed like Kim, had
my friends and kids call me Sager.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
So I feel, oh, yeah, is no, I'm done.

Speaker 7 (39:08):
I had to come on as myself. You don't want
to like show what you're doing, so oh in my
pocket my pocket handkerchief as well.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
But yeah, I'm ready to embody Sager excellent. I'm looking
forward to that. We actually Saga was able to join
for the A Bloc, so the audience will be able
to compare and contrast just how well you do excellent,
And we.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Already gave you all.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Your accolades Politicerprize winning journalists, blah blah blah, So no worry,
you're properly presented here. I've got a bunch of news
stories I want to get to with you. There's a
lot of stuff that is like right in your wheelhouse.
But before we did that, I wanted to get your
reaction to Trump gave an interview to NBC's Meet the
Press Crystal Welker. There were a number of moments that
were noteworthy, but I wanted to get your reaction this

(39:50):
one specifically where he says he's not sure if he's
got to follow the Constitution.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 6 (39:56):
Some of the worst, most dangerous people on earth. And
I was a to get him the hell out of here,
and the courts are holding me from doing it.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
But even given those numbers that you're talking about, don't
you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?

Speaker 1 (40:11):
As President I don't know.

Speaker 6 (40:13):
I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant
lawyers that work for me, and they are going to
obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said
is not what I heard. The Supreme Court said. They
have a different interpretation.

Speaker 5 (40:28):
Is anyone in your administration right now in contact with
El Salvador about returning a brigovarsiat?

Speaker 1 (40:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (40:37):
You'd have to ask the Attorney General of that question.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
So, Glenn, it doesn't surprise me to hear Trump saying like,
I don't know if I need to follow the constitution
some aspects of his administration. I think I expected basically
the direction that he's gone in. But I have to say,
you know, as someone who was accused of having Trump's arrangement,
Centerman is still accused of such things. It's actually been
much worse than I anticipated. And so I was just

(41:01):
curious your perspective on how this is going visa VI,
your expectations. What parts of it are you know, pushing
further the attacks on civil liberties, some of the authoritarian tactics,
et cetera. Just what's your view of how this is
all going now that we're more than one hundred days in.

Speaker 7 (41:21):
It's a little bit of a complex question for the
following reason. Obviously, I have been extremely vocal in denouncing
countless Trump policies that are clear violations on basic civil liberties,
on core concepts of due process and free speech. It's
like an onslaught against the Bill of Rights, against the
whole idea of having three branches of Congress. These things

(41:43):
are very concerning and very worrying and very dangerous. That said,
I started to make two quick points about this. One
was in that interview that you just showed with Meet
the Press. I do think that a lot of times,
so many of the scandals that became these kind of
red alert you know, eleven on the outraged scale scambals

(42:04):
are the byproduct of Trump either trolling or not being
very clear. He's not Actually he's a very effective speaker,
but he's not a very cogent or clear order of
his thoughts. They often get very confused. He becumes from
some in the middle of sentences. I think what happened
there was not he wasn't saying I think that, oh,
we may or may not have to abide other constitution.
The context for that was the Brigo Garcia case, where

(42:27):
the Supreme Court, by a nine to zero ruling, ordered
the Trump administration to do everything to facilitate his return
and then report to the courts what it is that
they were doing to be able to prove that they
were complying with the Supreme Court order. When President Trump,
you know, days later, met with Bukeley in the Oval
office and a reporter asked him about that, like, hey,
the Supreme Court told you get him back. It was

(42:49):
obviously he hadn't read the Supreme Court opinion. I don't
think it comes to a surprise to anybody that Trump
doesn't read Supreme Court opinions. And so he sort of said,
I'm not sure, and then he asked Stephen Miller, and
Steve Miller stood up and explicitly and directly lied to Trump, saying,
President Trump, we won on a ninety zero ruling. It
was ninety zero in our favor, saying we don't have

(43:10):
to get him back. And I believe Trump believes that
to this very day. So I think in the interview,
when she was saying do we have to buy it
by the constitution, that could be a question of do
we have to obey lower court judges or does the
constitution require you to get him back? But having said that,
just on that one issue, I do think that there
is this They came in very prepared, and I kept

(43:33):
hearing that throughout twenty twenty four from Trump people. We
know what we did wrong on the first term. We
didn't know what Washington we had too many people in
the administration and sabotaging us. They came in with a very
clear plan, most of which Trump explicitly discussed during the campaign,
and it was all about eliminating any impediments to what
Trump wanted to do, not just in the executive branch,

(43:54):
but in the entire country colleges and media outlets and
dissidents and activists. And that is where I think have
been so radical and so extreme, and a full scale,
very well coordinate attack on anything that might impedede Trump.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, and that's where you know, even on this comments
like I hear what you're saying about, Well, he's clumsy
and how he answered this, and sometimes he can be trolling.
You know, he's also flirted with twenty twenty eight. But
then in this interview is like, well, I'm not really
that interested in that, et cetera. But when you also
layer on top of that, he is also brazenly defying

(44:28):
the Constitution any number of ways. I mean, you know,
they think they have a case that they can take
to the Supreme Court about the Empowerment Control Act, but
power of the purse is long rested with Congress, and
they just feel like they can do whatever they want
with regard to not spending funds that have been appropriated,
fire whatever they want, run rough shot over the government. Obviously,
with regard to the Alien Enemies Act, they just decided, like,

(44:49):
we don't have to offer due process. Another brazen violation
of the Constitution. The assault on free speech with regard
to college campus is not just with regard to foreign students,
but also with regard to pressuring universities to you know,
withhold diplomas from American citizens.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
All of these things.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Are Oh, there was a memo that came out from
this government or their position officially is that they don't
need a warrant to go into your home if you
are suspected of being a gang member, and apparently being
suspected of being a gang member just means like you're
maybe from Venezuela and perhaps you have a tattoo so
when you put the comments in the context of it
doesn't seem like this administration does feel like they need

(45:29):
to abide by the typical understandings of the Constitution. One
of his very first executive orders was to say, hey,
we're going to end birthright citizenship, which the language of
which is plaine of day, Plain is day inside the Constitution.
That's one of the ways that I feel like Trump
two point zero is different than Trump one point zero,
where there was a lot of merit to the well,
I'll take him seriously but not literally. This time, I

(45:51):
feel like you do kind of have to take him
literally based on the actions that they have taken thus far,
which really have indulged his most maximalist instincts.

Speaker 7 (46:01):
Yeah, I agree with that absolutely. I should note that
several times Trump has been asked in the first four
to six weeks of his administration, if the Supreme Court
rules against you, would you ever consider ignoring or violating
a Supreme Court order? And he very explicitly said absolutely not,
I would never do so. And the difference between the
first so I'm not saying that means he won't, I'm

(46:23):
just saying that that idea has been in his head in.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Because he basically is right now right, especially with regard
to you.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
I know they're trying to play this legally.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Is oh, well, facilitate means we don't really have to
do anything.

Speaker 7 (46:35):
No, there's no question they're ignoring. Yeah, there's no quess right,
zero question. And they're doing it brazenly and defiantly. When
they go to a court, a lower court court or
an appellate court, they're contempt for their idea that they
have to justify what they're doing is palpable. So I
agree with you about the difference between the first and
second term. This is what I will say, though. I
remember when Wolsonar got elected in Brazil in twenty eighteen,

(46:57):
he had a long history of just the most alarming
and disturbing statement to like, first thing I'll do is
close the Congress. You know, Pinochet didn't throw enough people
out of helicop on and on and on. And as
it turned out, when he got into the question, was
our Brazilian institution strong and willing enough to confront him
even if it means risk, And the answer ended up
being yes, he ended up being actually a very weak president.

(47:19):
I think that happened in Trump point one two. There
was such a mobilization of every institution to try and
stop him, in my opinion, almost excessively. What we're seeing now, though, Crystal,
is some serious pushback that I think can be meaningful.
Like I said, Trump lost nine to zero in the
Supreme Court. Yes, they're ignoring it. They're not facilitating his return.
That's going to go back to the Supreme Court and

(47:40):
we'll see what the Supreme Court does. You see other
cases where they lost on a nine to zero ruling
as well. With the Alien Enemies Act and whether due
process is required before they can deport people in the
Supreme Court said absolutely, not only that, but advance notice
is required as well. A Trump appointed judge just you know,
three days ago last week said he doesn't even have
the right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act because we're

(48:03):
at war. So I just think that a lot of
what Trump is doing is extremely disturbing, extremely alarming. We're
still in the first three months. We'll see if they
run out of energy, if they start having internal dissent,
but more importantly, whether our institutions can really confront it.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, I think I agree with that, and I think
there's been more of a resistance that has been mounted
in recent weeks, and the courts, you know, they take
time to act. And one of the things that Trump
two point zero has done, you know, very intentionally, is
flood the zone. Is just take the chainsaw and just
move and just act. You saw this very explicitly with

(48:42):
the with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. They
drafted it, they held it, they got the people they
wanted to deport in place ready to board the planes
before they released it publicly. You know, there were attorneys,
who immigration attorneys who were starting to get wind of it.
That's the reason they were able to cobble together this
last minute hearing where the judge says, hey, you have

(49:05):
to even if the planes are the air, you have
to turn them around. And again they just ignore that
and oh, well they were over international waters.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
We couldn't do anything at that point. So sorry.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
And by the way, since you issued that order from
the bench, it doesn't really matter. But in any case
that the point is just that, because they've been so
willing to act aggressively and in ways that they themselves
know are probably not going to hold up to judicial scrutiny,
it has been very difficult for the courts to keep up.
The Democrats have been utterly pathetic in almost all instances.

(49:39):
I know is ye know who could have predicted that,
But you know their initial instinct was to be really
cowed by Trump two point zero. I think a lot
of the media's instinct has been to bend the knee
and basically bribe Trump to leave them alone so they
can get their mergers through, et cetera. You initially had
a Columbia University really bending the knee in particular, and
other universities getting to follow suit. Now you've started to

(50:02):
have led by Harvard, You've started to have a little
bit of backbone demonstrated with the universities, a little bit
of backbone now starting to be demonstrated by the law
firms as well. Still waiting a bit on the media,
I guess we have a few signs of that as well.
But you know, I agree with you that the now
that Trump has become so unpopular, and I think the
tariffs have been particular stapped of a lot of popular

(50:24):
support and institutional support as well. I think there's more
pushback than there was previously, but I'm concerned about how
much damage they can do before things are rained in
and as you know, because you've covered this better than
probably anyone, once the executive claims a power for itself,
Once an executive tramples on our rights, it's very hard
to put that genie back in the bottle.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Usually you just go increasingly in that direction. Whatever power
the last president grabs, the next president grabs that power
and expands it even further.

Speaker 7 (50:54):
Yeah, So I just wanted to pick them on that
last plant because I think it's such a crucial one.
During the campaign twenty sixteen and then even during the
Trump presidency, one of the things that bothered me and
concerned me about the liberal reaction to Trump, you know,
like the maximalists, hair on fire kind of reaction, and
that just being things like Russia, eate, I mean, like,
you know, just reactions to a lot of the policies,

(51:15):
is that so often things were depicted as some sort
of singular trumpy and evil that was this radical departure
from the American tradition. I remember the first time I
really was irritated by this was when Trump invited the
Egyptian dictator Sissy to the White House and the media
went berserk and said, this is no American president would
have done this, embraced a dictator like this before, and

(51:36):
I was like, what, that's the whole history of the
post World War two era American presidents embraced dictators pretty
much every month. It's what they wake up and they do.
And there was a and so much of what I
feel like going through these first three months of the
civil liberties onslaught is it reminds me so much of
those Bushheney years. You know, when I began writing about politics,

(51:58):
where the big framework was is the administration could do anything.
It could put people in prisons with no charges in
the middle of an ocean, or kidnap them or torture them,
or spy on people. And the if you raise questions
about it, the answer always was, why are you defending
the terrorists? And he would be like, what the whole
point of what I'm saying is that you don't know
if someone's a terrorist until they get due process. And

(52:19):
that's and you know, they invented all these radical presidential
theories about why they can ignore congressional law. And there's
an article today by jack Oldsmith, the Bush Cheney DJ
lawyer in the and Harvard law professor in New York
Times basically saying that most of the policies Trump is embracing,
all being radically extended in more dangerous form, come from

(52:39):
precedents that Obama won, that Biden won, that George Bush
one on the extent of presidential powers. And he says,
that's really the main problem this country has is we've
made the president into a king, which you know, is
exactly what the founder sought to avoid.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Yeah, and the last thing that we can move on
to what's going on with Yemen and Israel and Iran
some you know, very ominous developments that we'll track. The
last thing I wanted to get you on is something
that Michael Tracy has been talking about is the way
that this Trump administration seems to think that national security,
or deeming something a national emergency, as with the tariffs,

(53:17):
is a kind of cheat code to be able to
just do whatever you want without having to worry about laws, Congress, courts,
due process, etc. You see that that's the Alien Enemies Act,
that's the exploration of declaring cartel members any enemy combatants.
That's the justification for the tariffs as well. And that direction,

(53:39):
to me is also very unnerving because Historically, the courts
have granted the executive a lot of bandwidth to declare
what is and isn't a national security threat, what is
and isn't a national emergency, etc. So they feel like
they can just stretch that outrageously to be able to
claim effectively wartime powers here at home, you know, with

(54:00):
massive blowback on our own citizens, not to mention immigrants
who are here as well.

Speaker 7 (54:06):
No, that is a massive concern, and that was part
of what Professor Golsmith's article is about, was exactly that
there's the set of precedents now, the idea that presidents
have virtually unimited power and war, that's very embedded American culture. Obviously,
you know, Lincoln notoriously suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.
We obviously don't have anything remotely close to that. You know,
FDR use the Alien Enemies Act to detain huge numbers

(54:30):
of Japanese Americans and concentration camps on the grounds that
they're alien enemies, and the courts have often approved of
these over the decades, creating this you know, almost omnipotent presidency.
But most presidents have had some restraints on what they
were willing to do political ones or ethical ones or whatever.
And Trump is taking that to the fullest extent. And
you know, again in the War on Terror, that's what

(54:51):
was happening. And well, and then finally you did have
pushback from courts, like in two thousand and eight the
Supreme Court rule that even Guantanamo detainees have a right
of habeas corpus to go in and see the against
them and to question it, and huge numbers prove their
innocence from that, showing the dangers of just allowing the
president to treat people as guilty before they've been found guilty.
But again, I think that Trump is exploiting in a

(55:12):
very dangerous way a long history of expanding executive powers,
in part because people in Congress don't want that responsibility.
They're happy to let the president make tough decisions because
they just want to get reelected.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
That's a good transition to Yemen and the Hoofies, I
would say, And we can go ahead and put these
images up on the screen. So they were able to
successfully launch a ballistic missile that struck near Israel's main airport.
This just happened on Sunday. You can see the black
smoke there rising in the air. This is, according to
the Wall Street Journal, a significant target, a rare hit

(55:48):
of such a significant target, and happened just hours before
the Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to expand their war in Gaza.
There were a number of injuries, no fatalities, however, and
the Houthis are saying that they are going to continue.
They're saying that they're instituting an air blockade. I don't
think they have that those capabilities, but they certainly demonstrated here.

(56:08):
The US and Israel attempted to intercept this missile. They
were unsuccessful, and so you have it, you know, causing
some damage to there near the airport.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Glenn, what do you make of this?

Speaker 2 (56:18):
And also just I mean, this is again an escalation
and continuation of the Biden policy visa VI what the
US has been doing with the hoo Thi's of just hey,
we're going to just keep bombing them rather and we
know the one thing that worked you get the Houthis
to stop doing the thing that they're doing was a ceasefire.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
But instead we're just.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
Going to keep bombing them, even though everyone knows this
is not going to be successful. And yet somehow, you know,
this was the topic that was in the signal Gate conversation.
Everyone pretends like, if we just make a bomb go
boom is somewhere in Yemen, that this is a quote
unquote success.

Speaker 7 (56:54):
It's so interesting because the one of the worst humanitary
crisis of this century was when Saudi Arabia aged all
out war with the very direct and over help and
cooperation with the Obomb administration on Yemen in an extent
to exterminate the Houthis. It killed massive numbers of innocent people,
It caused mass famine and Yemen, and yet it really

(57:15):
didn't degrade the houth The's capability at all. They learned
how instead to protect their military assets, how to bury
them underground, how to disperse them. It really made them stronger.
And it's so interesting that you say that throughout twenty
twenty four, Biden was bombing the Houthis almost every day,
not nearly to the extent the United States is now
bombing them under Trump, but still nonetheless bombing the every day.

(57:37):
And I don't know if you've seen it, but in
mid twenty twenty four he did an interview Trump did
with Tim Pole, who asked him about the bombing of Yemen,
and Trump denounced Biden, saying, yeah, these democrats, they just
want to go all around the world bombing people. It's
totally unnecessary. Why would we bomb the houthis At least
then from like an America first perspective or whatever, Hoothies
really were attacking American ships because they blamed us correctly

(57:58):
for arming and funding Israel's destruction of Gaza. Once that
ceasefire happened, the who he said, We're not going to
attack anybody anymore. Our cause is done, and they did stop.
And then once Israel quickly violated the ceasefire agreement by
blocking humanitarian need from entering the ceasefire required them to
do so, they said, we're going to resume our attacks,
but only on Israeli ships, so not on American ships.

(58:21):
They hadn't attacked American ships for two months when Trump
suddenly decided he was going to not only reinstate, but
radically escalate the bombing campaign of in Yemen. And it
is such an interesting test in some way for MAGA,
in that they've claimed one of their main goals of
their political movement is to end Middle East wars, and

(58:43):
here you have Trump totally gratuitously restarting one, and there's
been some muttering, but not very much pushback at all.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Well, and this is one of the things that was
most disturbing to me about Signalgate is when you look
in all the people that are in that chat. You
got Toulci Gabber, you got jd Vance, you got Joe Ken,
all these people, number of whom are supposed to be
maggot in America. First, Jade Vance puts up this like
weird complaint about isn't this just too good for Europe

(59:12):
that we're doing this. I mean, listen, I get it.
He's trying to appeal to a certain audience. But once
that gets swatted aside and Steven Miller comes in over
the top and basically says, no, this is what the
boss wants everybody. Okay, great, you know, fift pound fire,
American flag emoji, et cetera. And that, to me was
sort of lost in the also significant and serious conversation

(59:34):
about use of signal and all these sorts of things
and kind of the process of it. But the fact
that there was next to no dissent about a policy
that everyone knows to have failed, and also by the way,
is illegal in my view, should be authorized by Congress.
And you know, this all just played out in this
very casual signal chat where we know now there have

(59:56):
been massive strikes on innocent civilians. There was a migration
center for a number of African migrants who were killed,
and this just goes almost unremarked at this point.

Speaker 7 (01:00:09):
Yeah, I mean, as Michael Tracy said, you could never
go broke betting on the continuation of bipartisan foreign policy
in Washington. No matter how many candidates who win say
they're going to you know, revolutionize it and uproot it, it
just sort of continues endlessly. You know, I think that
signal chat is interesting. I mean, I think Jadvance I
would give him a little bit of space in that
he knew he was, you know, communicating with a bunch

(01:00:31):
of people who don't care about civilian casualties at all,
don't care about the implications of starting a war, so
he was trying to kind of play into their you know,
prejudices and beliefs. Maybe I'm being naive, but you know,
he was trying to cater his argument to that crowd,
saying I think this is a mistake. You know, he
was clearly opposed to it, but it was a very timid,
very meet. Soon as he got pushed back, he said, no, no,

(01:00:52):
don't worry if it happens, all supported publicly. And then
when Pete Haig says showed, look, we just you know,
just destroyed this whole building, this residential building that they
bombed an apartment building because they thought a hoothy commander
was inside with his girlfriend. It was a residential building.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
JD.

Speaker 7 (01:01:09):
Van said, you know, awesome, and they all started putting
up their muscle on American flag tap you know emojis,
including Talsea, who I know for so long has been
v a mainly outspoken against the bombing of Yemen, and
now she too is a supporter of it. And I
know we're talking about Mike Walts in a second, but this,
to me is one of the most alarming parts of
the Trump administration is you do have some ideological diversity

(01:01:32):
and disagreement in some areas, but what has been made
abundantly clear to everybody is that the only relevant metric
is not where you stand in this issue, where where
you stand that at you, but absolute loyalty to Trump.
So when Trump speaks, you nod, you defend it, and
you carry it out with your greatest enthusiasm, and the
slightest hint of disloyalty puts you under suspicion or even

(01:01:54):
getting fired. And that is the climate that I find
so chilling, because it's not just for the White House,
but they're trying to make it for the country as
a whole.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Yeah, that's that's so well said.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
And the other part of the Houthi strike on Bengurian
Airport that is playing out right now, I can put
this next on piece up on the screen is Boebe
is clearly trying to use this as a pretext to try,
once again for the millions time, to pull us into
war with Iran. So he says here he's quote tweeting
an old post from President Trump. He says, President Trump

(01:02:25):
is absolute right attacks by the Houthis emanate from Iran.
Israel respond to the hoothy attack against our main airport
and at a time and place of our choosing to
their Iranian terror masters. And the post that he, you know,
he quote tweeted here says every shot fired by the
Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward as
being a shot fired from the weapons and the leadership of
Iran and Iran will be held responsible and stuff for

(01:02:47):
the consequences, and those consequences will be dire. So yeah,
there are really there are ideological battles that are playing
out within the Trump administration. We've seen this person in
that person getting fired, Mike Will, most notably being, you know,
given the much less prominent and significant role of UN ambassador.

(01:03:07):
But some of these battles are also less about ideology
and more about personality conflicts as well. So it can
be kind of hard to suss out what exactly is
going on here. But there's no doubt that BB is
trying to do everything he can to draw us into
war with Iran. President Trump so far has been interested
in negotiating with Iran. I think that's one area of

(01:03:29):
this administration that I can say, you know, that's to
his credit, and I hope he continues in that direction.
Nor do I have But it's not like I have
a lot of confidence that we're going to have the
patience to wait out what will undoubtedly be difficult diplomatic
maneuvers here.

Speaker 7 (01:03:47):
Yeah, I think there's a clear split inside MAGA that
is very genuine You've seen some very prominent MAGA voices
or influencers that Trump cares about. I guess you could say,
including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, who
are essentially on a public and private crusade to make

(01:04:07):
sure that Trump doesn't get pressured by Israel into going
and attacking Iran, and JD. Vans is part of that.
Donald Trump Junior is part of that. Make of these
people what you will make of their motives, what you
will The reality is that they have been on a
very over coordinated campaign to try and persuade Trump that
this will destroy his legacy and destroy his presidency. And

(01:04:29):
then you have this other camp, of course, that Mike
Waltz was in. That Marcar Rubio, though, is still in.
Before we make too much of Mike Waltz's firing, his
replacement is Mark Rubio and Cotton Lindsay Graham, that whole crowd,
along with of course the Israelis Now, I do think
you know, I'll just tell you this story. I debated
Alan Dershowitz about seven months ago in New York, and

(01:04:49):
the proposition was something like the us of Bambaran's new
Court facilities, and I knew I was going to come
and say, Yeah. I knew he was going to come
and say, of course, because he's Alan Dershowitz and he's
an Israel supporter. Aaran is like six and a half
seconds away from having a NUCRO weapon. So I wanted
to come and show how long those warnings, those same
exact warnings have been emanating from Israel supporters, and it
actually shocked me. You go back to like the late

(01:05:11):
nineties throughout I mean, it's been like twenty five years
that Netnyahu and his loyalists inside the United States have
been trying to learn the United States into a war
with Iran by saying over and over, you remember that chart,
that that primitive cartoon that Netnya who brought to the
un of the ticking time bomb. They are desperate and
have been desperate to get the United States to go
and destroy This is not about destroying the Nucro installations.

(01:05:33):
They want to change the regime and reinstall the Shah,
the Chavon's Sun. And I do think there's a part
of Trump instinctively that would like his legacy to be
like I ended Wars. I was the peacemaker. I think
some of the blocosity we saw exactly the same thing
from Pete has Hexstts this weekend, where he, you know,

(01:05:53):
basically said exactly what Nanya who said, Aaron be unnoticed.
We're going to pick a time in place of our
choosing to make you pay for arming these. Hopefully that
instinct that I really do believe is real and Trump,
with conflicting instincts, will be able to be kind of manipulated.
The problem is, as you know, Crystal, they withdrew from
the Iran deal, and so any new deal has to
be significantly stronger than the Iran deal for just Trump

(01:06:16):
to justify why he pulled out. But that's very hard
because the Iramians had negotiated to their fullest extent and
got to the own point where they wouldn't go any further.
And the question is how do you get in some
middle brown where you're not going to warp but getting
an Iran deal that isn't the Obama deal.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Yeah, I mean, I think they could probably get away
honestly with just basically having the Obama deal, but with
some space saving bullshit that Trump could point to. I
don't think it would I don't know, just something that
would have to be yeah that different that they could
just be like, oh and look we crafted this gold
Trump statue and he'll be like, look, this is so
much better than the other deal that Obama did, or something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Of that nature.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
I do want to quickly get to the Mike Waltz thing.
This is Extuner's report from the water jampost that Trump
got pissed off at him. This is also encouraging, by
the way, because he was seen as having acted too
much in coordination with BB and it was just too
overt that he was trying to push Israeli interests over
US interests. Headline here is inside Waltzs's alister before Signal Gate.

(01:07:18):
Talks with Israel angered Trump, And to your point, I
was like, good that Mike Waltz is out. Now we
have Marco Ruvio in. That's not really an improvement. And
put the next one up on the screen. They're talking
about Stephen Miller being the potential replacement for Mike Waltz,
and Miller's the guy who in the Signal Gate chat

(01:07:41):
is ultimately sort of the decider and seemed to be
the one who was representing the position of the Boss.
To your point earlier about I do think that Trump
just believes whatever Stephen Miller is telling him with regard
to the Alien Enemies Act and what the Supreme Court said.
I think he even believed Stephen Miller just telling him like,
oh yeah that his knuckles totally said MS thirteen, even

(01:08:03):
though it was the most embarrassing photoshop of all time.
So in some way, Steven Miller already occupies this position
of extraordinary power. But he is I mean, he is
an extremist. He has been aggressive about wanting to deport
anyone who's pro Palestine. He, like I said, was the
one who came in and said, yes, let's bomb yem

(01:08:23):
and let's go forward.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
We're good with this, this is what the Boss wants, etc.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
So it certainly doesn't give me any comfort that it
would be potentially Stephen Miller occupying this post if they
don't just keep it with Rubio indefinitely.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:08:36):
I read the Washington Post over the weekend where it
basically said that Trump advisors were telling the media that
Waltz had stopped serving or working for the president of
his country and began working for the president of another country,
which isn't quite technically treason, but it has the very
core spirit of being that yeah, I remember.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Quite traitorous at the very least.

Speaker 7 (01:08:59):
Yeah, yeah, I mean plotting against your own president by
consulting and conspiring with a foreign leader. That's like the
definition of it. If it had been any other country,
people would be immediately understanding of that. But I also thought,
like anyone who reads that Washington Post, and Washington was thinking, wow, there,
but for the grace of God, go I because when
is the last time that was punished conspiring with Israel

(01:09:21):
to advance and prioritize interests, its interest over American interests.
But again this I found this encouraging too, Crystal, even
though Mark Rubio is his replacement, even though Steven Miller
and a bunch of other you know, radical zealous defenders
of Israel are very much lurking in high positions of power.
Because I think what irritated Trump is not just the

(01:09:43):
disloyalty part of it where he met with that Yahoo
kind of behind Trump's back in a way that Trump
perceived it, but also you know, obviously he talks to
Mike Waltz every day about key foreign policy decisions. That's
what that job is, And it seems like every day
Mike Waltz kept pushing Trump and pushing Trump and pushing
Trump to ignore a deal, just saying, forget a deal,

(01:10:04):
it's not even worth it. You can't trust the Iranians.
That is the Tom Cotton Lindsay Graham position. And I
think Trump has decided no, he wants to do a deal.
He's going to do everything possible to do a deal.
I do think there'll be a war after if they
don't get one done. But when you have the person
next to you pushing you to war, and there's all
these comments, remember the list trainy comments. He gave big,
big speech about MEO cons how there's a pathology in

(01:10:26):
Washington of people who just constantly want wars. And I
think he came to see Mike Waltz as one of
those people three months late. He's always been that person,
but I think that in this particular case, it just
became too much.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
Yeah, the Ukraine Hawks have been kind of smarter about
the way they've approached Trumpian psychology, where they like, they're like, oh,
you can do this minerals deal with Zelenski.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
It's a deal. You like deals, right, am? I?

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
And it de facto though, acts as a security guarantee
and an indefinite US commitment to Ukraine. So Lindsey Graham
is delighted. He's crafting a new like all out sanctions
on Russia bill, which I didn't even know there were
possible sanctions that we haven't levied together yet. Yeah, exactly,
I'm like, what else can you possibly do? But he's
got some ideas. Apparently that's got possibly a filbuster proof

(01:11:16):
majority in the Senate if they choose to bring it up.
And so yeah, I think the uh, I guess the
Iranian the the desire for war with Iran was a
little too aggressively pushed by Mike Waltz. He didn't quite
understand the Trumpian psychology and how to handle this appropriately.
And apparently he also pissed off Susie Wilds and treated

(01:11:36):
her like she was a staffer. And so she was like, Okay, buddy,
have fun at the UN Let's go ahead and get
to this, this Boycott's bill that I know you've been
tracking really closely. In fact, Glenn, why don't you go
ahead and set up what this bill was meant to do,
because it is, unfortunately in line with some other legislation

(01:11:59):
that has previously been passed into law. Seemed like I
had a head of steam co sponsored by Mike Lawler
and Josh Geidheimer, so you had bipartisan support, and yet
it ended up being, at least for now, they pulled
the vote, and looks like APAC may take a rare
l on this one.

Speaker 7 (01:12:18):
Yeah. I think that if I just give the brief
history of context, I think it's so interesting and so important. Yeah,
which is you know how there was just like a
whole industry of quote unquote ANTII woke pundits or whatever
who incessantly focused on college campuses and you're like, why
are you so worried about like college sophomores at over Ruin.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Yeah, I'm a little familiar with that.

Speaker 7 (01:12:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you you've heard a little
bit about that, maybe you mentioned it a few times.
One of the main reasons if you look at most
of those people whose careers were built on that, they're
very strong Israel supporters. Israel identified like ten or fifteen
years ago that one of the main threats to their
ability to dominate and repress their neighbors is that there
was a growing boycott movement centered on American campuses that

(01:13:00):
they were afraid of because it was modeled after the
one in South Africa in the eighties that was driven
by campus activism and that took down the apartheid regime.
And they set out to decide, we have to put
an end to this whole idea of advocating a boycott.
They got the EU to criminalize advocacy of boycott's as
the anti semitic. They got that expanded definition of anti semitism,
and now they're doing the same thing in the US.

(01:13:21):
The thing that always made amazing me Crystal is so
few people know that in thirty seven American states, mostly
Red states but not all, it is a requirement if
you want a contract with the state that you have
to sign a loyalty O saying you do not support
and have never participated in a boycott of Israel. You
can boycott American states or other countries, just not Israel.

(01:13:42):
And now that law was the basis for what Trump
did in a twenty eighteen which is he said it's
now a felony if a company participates in a boycott
sponsored by another country that the US government doesn't support.
So let's say, like Iran wants to boycott Israel, and
some company participates in that boycott even though the US
government isn't. That's a felony to do. And now this

(01:14:06):
new bill would expand it to include not just government,
not just led by or advocated by foreign governments, but
also international organizations, and it would include people who are
boycotting Israel out of conscience and conviction, and it would
turn them into felons. And I think, finally, this is
almost like a bridge too far for a lot of

(01:14:27):
people in the Senate, who, by the way, are also
angry that the HI definition prohibits anybody from saying that
Jesus participated in the killing of Jews, even though the
Bible kind of implies that in some ways. Yeah, so
I think they're kind of going too far.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Finally, interesting, let's put let's put see one up on
the screen. This is from drop site, which did a
fantastic job covering this And actually Ryan was saying the
amount of social media attraction they got from covering this
bill was like extraordinary, So I think there likely was
a massive effort, like a huge number of people probably

(01:15:03):
called their congressman, and we're saying do not vote for
this bill, and you know, on both sides of the aisle,
so I think there might have been a public pushback
here that was important too. You can see the Democratic
co sponsors. You got a handful of them here, Gotttheimer, Moskowitz,
morel Davis, and Gillen. You have a longer list here
of Republican co sponsors, I mean, and the primary sponsor

(01:15:23):
is this guy, Mike Lawler. It's also interesting to me
this is a blatantly unconstitutional and extremist bill, and yet
Lawler is seen as this quote unquote moderate. He's in
a swing district in New York. I think he's very
much in jeopardy for election this time around. He's just
got re elected, so he's been there a relatively short
period of time and is the type of district that

(01:15:43):
could easily flip in a wave election year. But in
any case, you know, I thought this thing was going
to sail through, and now they've at least pulled the
vote for today. I did not think it would get
through the Senate because I didn't think they'd be able
to garner enough Democrats to overcome a filibuster. But you
did start to get You had Marjorie Tayler Green and

(01:16:03):
can see two up on the screen. She I think
was the first person who came out and said, listen,
I'm not going to vote for this.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
I'll be voting no.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
It is my job to defend Americans' rights to buy
or boycott whomever they choose with not the government harshly
finding them or prisoning them. But what I don't understand
is why we are voting on a bill on behalf
of other countries and not the president's executives' orders that
are for our country. You had Thomas Massey, who has
been quite principled, you know, when it comes to free speech.
He came after Marjorie Taylor Green says I agree, I'll

(01:16:32):
be voting no on this bill as well. And you
had Charlie Kirk also chime in and weigh in on
this debate with his commentary. There was one piece of
this that kind of irritated me. But we'll see if
you had the same reaction to it, he says. Tomorrow
the House will vote on HR. Eight sixty seven, a
bill that will criminalize private boycotts of Israel finds up
to a million dollars in prison time up to twenty

(01:16:53):
years bills like this only create more anti Semitism. I
think that's true, and play into growing narratives that Israel's
running the US government.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
Also so true.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
In America, you're allowed to hold differing views, You're allowed
to disagree in protests. We've allowed far too many people
who hate America to move here from abroad. But the
right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.
That's the point that part that annoyed me. Because of
courts First Amendment, free speech rights apply to everyone who's here.
In any case, this bill should not pass. Any Republican
that votes for this bill will expose themselves. We will

(01:17:20):
be watching very closely. So I guess I am kind
of curious what is going on here because if you
look at Marjorie Taylor Green's record, if you look at
Charlie Kirk's record, Thomas Massey put in a little different category,
like they're all on board with kidnapping students off the
street for daring to publish an op ed that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Was critical of Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
It's not like they've been real consistent on the free
speech part. Marjorie Taylor Green sponsored a Central Resolution against
Rashida Talib for daring to participate in pro Palestine protests
and called those protests, you know, insurrections. So it's not
like she's been principled here. So where do you think
that this is ultimately coming from?

Speaker 8 (01:18:04):
You know?

Speaker 7 (01:18:05):
It was so interesting when when the Ukraine War happened.
I had a lot of people in Congress who are
MAGA affiliated or MAGA adjacent, and they were all against
the Ukraine War. And I would love I did it
with R. FK. Junior two ones. I would have them
come on and be like, why against the Ukraine War,
you know, and they would all say, it's enough. Enough
is enough with funding the militaries and wars of foreign countries.

(01:18:28):
We have so many problems in the United States. We
can't afford to keep doing this. It's time to cut
off all these wars that were fighting, that are earned
in our interest and keep the money at home. And
I would always say, oh, that's so persuasive. Does that
apply to the financing and army of Israel as well?
And of course they would start studying and trying to
find reasons why somehow they ration out was different, when
of course it so blatantly wasn't. I think what you're

(01:18:49):
starting to say. And there was another Marjorie telling Green
tweet about Iran, very you know, vocally saying we cannot
go to war with Iran. We are sick of supporting
a fighting wars for other countries in the Rea that
have huge nuclear arsenals, which obviously means Israel. We're sick
of fighting words for Israel. You know, chrise if you look.
And this struck me the other day. Almost every day,

(01:19:10):
literally there's some major event that comes from Washington, like
a policy initiative or an executive order or a resolution,
or a press conference or some big social media campaign
from our politicians in Washington that are all about Israel.
Like it's every day they talk about Israel. Every day
they want to do something for Israel. And I do think,

(01:19:31):
like those free speech abuses, it's starting to create this backlash, Like,
wait a minute, I thought our whole movement was about
America first, Like We're going to focus on the forgotten
person and the working class and the downtrodden in the
industrialized cities, and instead we're spending all this time on Israel,
in attacking American civil liberties, on behalf of this foreign country.

(01:19:53):
And I do think it's starting to create some real resentment,
not like in little spaces, but some growing resentment. Rampaul
a huge speech on the State for about the attacks
and free speech from thishri Bill, and those are significant.
Once that starts happening within a movement, many respected and
influential voices within the movement saying the same thing, it
can really spread quickly, and let's hope this does.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
I think you were right to point to that provision
that you know, Christians really took umbrage at, felt like
that was constraining what they could say about their own faith.
But I also think we have to be honest about
the fact that there is a growing, like overtly anti
Semitic part of the republic. I mean thing I'm thinking
about nickqwent tests very popular overt Nazi ideology, right, And

(01:20:41):
I wonder I don't want to put that label on
like you know, Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever. I don't
know what's in our heart, But how do you feel
about the fact that there is kind of a horseshoe
with people who hold of you like Nick Fuentes and
those of us who are trying to be principled about
free speech and principled about Hey, let's not like endlessly
bomb babies. This seems really bad. How do you intellectually

(01:21:05):
gropple with that sort of thing.

Speaker 7 (01:21:08):
I think this is true of almost every issue, where
people on the same side of the issue have sometimes
differing motives or even radically antithetical movement motives. You know,
you could have people who are concerned about the influx
of people legally over the border because they're just white
nationalists and don't want brown people in the country, and
there are a lot of those, And you can have
people with like good faith concerns. I mean, like people

(01:21:30):
on the left used to worry about how it would
drive down wages for the American worker, or how it
would make cities incapable of absorbing them all in a
humanistic way. And the fact that some people are on
one side of the debate and who have really malicious
ideas and others have well intention ideas, I think you
just have to separate them out. But it doesn't impugne
the fact that there's this coalition itself. And you know,
you could say that on the other side of the

(01:21:51):
that issue too, people who want open borders were big
corporate interest and now there's a lot of liberals who
believe that are not open borders but far less repressive
and restrict ones. So on the one hand, I get
what you're saying. And this whole idea of America First,
you know, goes back to Charles Lindberg and the isolation
is for World War Two, who thought we were getting
involved in World War Two because the Jews were kind

(01:22:13):
of prompting us to do so. So that is the
tradition out of which America First non interventionism grows. But
I also think these people do have a because if
it were only if they were only applying it to Israel,
I would say, Okay, this is probably driven by anti Semitism.
They're also against the US involvement in Ukraine. They think
that's just as much of a violation of the America

(01:22:35):
First ideology that it's globalism. Pretty much, any military invention
around the intervention around the world, that's how they see it.
So yes, of course there's lurking anti Semitism, like every
other bigotry and every faction. I personally don't think that's
the driving thrust of all of this. I think they're
starting to make it's becoming unsustainable to keep saying America

(01:22:57):
first on the one hand, and keep voting one bill
after the another in putting attacks on a civil American
about this one single foreign country.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
I think it's becoming increasingly unsustainable. With the base, I
would say, and we've seen. Look, Republicans are far more
supportive of I'm talking about base. Republican voters far more
supportive of Israel than Democratic base. But Democrats have basically
fully turned on Israel at this point. Some eighty percent
or something say we should not be shipping weapons anymore.
The real core demographic that still supports this view are

(01:23:28):
basically boomer Republicans. But even among Republicans, there's been a
shift in public sentiment. And I do think that there
is power in It's just so brazenly incompatible to say
I'm America first, and yet I spend all my time
thinking about talking about and passing legislation for the nation
of Israel and hanging to it or where an IDF

(01:23:49):
soldier uniformed into the halls of Congress or whatever you know,
like it. Just I think from a public perspective, it's
very hard to sustain that position, and so I do
think you see some representatives who are having to bend
some to that reality. I'm just you know, on a
whole I'm just much more cynical about these people, just

(01:24:09):
based on the track record. Yeah, I mean, they're still
all voting for more weaponshipments to Israel in lockstep, like
there is no dissent on that whatsoever. They're all on
board with, Hey, let's just disappear any college student who
participated in a protest we don't like, Let's just disappear
and detain them and deport them and do whatever we

(01:24:30):
can and attack the universities in this like in this
the ultra the Wokesters could never have dreamed of the
authoritary tactics being used to constrain speech at universities in
defense of this one supposedly oppressed minority group, right, And
so I just don't see anything approaching a consistent principle

(01:24:51):
being applied here, which is why it's almost confusing to
me that there was any descent on this bill whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (01:24:56):
And I didn't expect it.

Speaker 7 (01:24:59):
Yeah, you know, just on that stuff. I mean, if
you listen to Israel supporters and the way they argue,
they have verbatim copied the script that they were kind
of the character of the script of the woke left
that they had spent years mocking, you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
Know, in this one minority victim group.

Speaker 7 (01:25:13):
Yeah, save spaces. They had that like twenty two year
old's college kid come from the universityild I am not
safe while I stood by Mike Johnson, you know, hate
speech codes to protect this minority group. Plus like the
instant resorting to calling everybody a racist and bigot the
minute you disagree. This is all like woke caricature of
woke one oh one that they've been mocking that they

(01:25:34):
now adopt completely. That said, you know, you mentioned these polls,
and there's clearly a very substantial decline which we haven't
seen in decades in American support for Israel. And while yes,
a big part of that is due to almost uniform
Democratic reversal on this, a big part of it as
well are younger Republicans, Republicans under the age of fifty,
who have had a massive jump. I think it's now

(01:25:56):
a majority of people who say they disapprove of Israel
is really just it's like older Fox News watching Republicans
who still have maintained their support for Israel. And if
there's one thing politicians know it's public opinions, so I'm
sure they go to their town halls and are constantly
asked about this. Of Apak is not going to disappear overnight,
the Israeli lobby is not going to disappear overnight, nor

(01:26:18):
is these decades long dogmas about how we have to
protect Israel. But I do think that these things happen gradually,
you know, through these incremental changes. And then also I
do think once people get desperate, like once Israel supporters
really believe they're losing the debate, they resort to increasingly
extreme tactics like censorship and other things in a desperate
hope to win, and it fuels the backlash.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Yeah, no, I think that's right. And so you have
two key constituencies apparently supporting Israel in lockstep right now.
That would be Boomer Republicans watching Fox News. So this
is an extraordinary piece from New York mag. Obviously, Senator
John Patterman Pennsylvania wins. Is this kind of progressive every champion.

(01:27:01):
You know, this is someone I was excited about seeing
in the Senate. He positioned himself as a kind of
like Bernie Sanders adjacent mayor of a steel town, declining
steel town, et cetera great profile. Then tragically, during his
campaign suffers a pretty severe stroke, is still able to
defeat doctor Oz even after having a debate performance which

(01:27:23):
was very clear this stroke had significantly affected him, and
then once he gets into the Senate, his politics almost
completely change. Now in fairness on Israel, and Ryan did
all the reporting on this, he had even before the
stroke been like, I'm pro Israel. And by the way,
you know APAC and your affiliated groups, just tell me
what you want me to say.

Speaker 3 (01:27:41):
I'm going to say it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
Because he wanted to also make sure that they didn't
get involved against him in his primary with Connor Lamb,
who seemed like he could be a strong challenger in
that Democratic primary at this point. But you know, we're
just talking about members of Congress who seemed to spend
all their time thinking about this foreign nation. And Richitaas
and this guy are like pac in point number one

(01:28:03):
and number two. So let's put this article up on
the screen. Because some of Fetterman's staffers decided to speak
to New York Magazine about what they are seeing behind
the scenes. And you know, if you take them at
their word, they're basically describing another health cover up, kind
of akin to what we saw with regard to Joe Biden,
where the stroke did really change his personality, made his

(01:28:27):
views more extreme. Also have created, you know, this pattern
of really erratic and frankly dangerous behavior at the headline
here all by himself, John Fetterman insists he is in
good health, but staffers pass and present say they no
longer recognize the man they once knew, They say. His
sixteen hundred word email this is Fetterman's, came with the
subject line concerns contained a list of them. Sorry, this

(01:28:48):
is one of his staffers who was sending an email
of their concerns. From the seemingly mundane, he eats fast
food multiple times a day to the scary, we do
not know if he is taking his meds, and his
behavior frequently suggests he is not. Often see the kind
of warning signs we discussed. Gentlelsen wrote Conspiratorial Thinking Megalomania.
For example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source

(01:29:08):
on Israel and Gaza around, but his sources are just
what he reads in the news. He declines most briefings,
never reads memos high high as low lows, long, rambling,
repetitive and self centered monologues, lying in ways that are painfully,
awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room. It's got to
put the next piece up on the screen. Members of
his team told this journalist this was an early warning

(01:29:28):
sign that something was off with their boss. In early
February twenty twenty three, after Fetterman had indeed been sworn in,
members of the Senate gathered the Library of Congress for
a caucus retreat. Betterman, fresh off a hard fought victory
in the Cycles Marquis Race, should have been riding high,
only he wasn't. Stafford recalled getting a text from a
person the retreat asking if their boss was okay. Betterman
was sitting at a table by himself, slowly sipping a

(01:29:50):
coke and refusing to talk with anybody. Later that day,
another staffer heard an alarming report from a journalist Betterman
had just walked obliviously into the row and was nearly
struck by a car. Fetterman went on to make statements
that shock people. In opposing a ceasefire. With regards to Gaza,
he said, let's get back to killing. Person who heard
the conversation told me, he said, kill them all. In

(01:30:12):
a statement, Fetterman denied the account, adding any reference to
killing was solely about Hamas and I do support the
destruction of that organization down to its last member and Glenn.
In another part of this article, they describe his wife
being in tears. You know, she's a sort of liberal humanitarian.
She was upset over his position on Israel and Gaza,

(01:30:34):
to the point of, you know, being quite emotional about
it and saying, listen, they're bombing babies. You can't have
this position.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
She denies that there's been any changes in his health status,
but when you read the details here, including of his
stay at Walter Reed, you come away with a quite
clear impression that he is not well, that it's impacted
his ability to serve his constituents, that it has fundamentally
changed his positioning and his approach to a number of

(01:31:03):
issues that voters elected him, you know, to have a
certain ideological viewpoint.

Speaker 7 (01:31:07):
On Yeah, you know, just to address the leading example
you raised, of course, it is true that you know,
in twenty twenty two and elsewhere, Feedeman sort of gave
lip service to the idea that he was in favor
of Israel, I think most people understand that if you
want to win statewide office, especially in a state like
Pennsylvania where there's a very heavy pro Jewish pro a

(01:31:30):
Jewish contingent pro Israel contingent, you can't just be like
waving a Palestinian flag. So I think people kind of
dismissed that. But what we've seen from him is not
just like sort of pro Israel lip service, but like
almost like a psychotic joy in seeing the destruction, wanting
it to continue, on top of an extremely hostile posture

(01:31:54):
to anybody who raises it with him. You know, he
tries to be just as kind of offensive and alienating
as possible in the ways that he speaks, which I
don't think was the John Fetterman that we saw regularly
prior to this stroke. I'm always a little hepotant to
comment in someone's mental health or or psychological state, in
part because I'm not a professional, but also because it's
hard to assess people from a distance, but I do.

(01:32:16):
It is so interesting to me, you know, when he
had that stroke, every Republican I know was saying, you know,
he's a vegetable, how can he possibly run yet alone win?
And the minute he comes out and says I'm a
big supporter of Israel. They're all like, Wow, his brain recuperated.
He's one of the most sensible people in all of Washington.
That really is all it takes to cure your mental

(01:32:37):
health and still problems.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
I mean, but I'll tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
I have to say, Glenn, I hear you on like
being reluctant to comment on someone's mental Like I'm also
not an expert, but I feel less that way post
Biden because the like, if you're hiding from us, what
your capacity is, that has a direct impact on all
of us. I mean, not just constituents. Pennsylvania senators are

(01:33:02):
very powerful individuals. He has become an extremely prominent voice,
held up by people like Bill Maher as a potential
presidential canon. Now I think that's preposterous because much of
the Democratic base hates this guy at this point. But
you know, so That's why I don't I don't have
any reluctance about it because I think there has been

(01:33:22):
such an inclination among both parties, but in particular Democrats
have had some of the worst examples lately. If you
think about Feinstein, if you think about Biden as well,
of trying to cover the reality of members and the
president himself who were in decline, who were really not
capable of fully functioning in the job. And I think

(01:33:43):
it's an outrage to democracy, and I think it's an
outrage to you know, Americans who deserve capable representation.

Speaker 7 (01:33:51):
No, it's a great point. I mean, I think the
hiding of Biden's cogetive of the client, even though the
entire public side saw it, the hiding of it within
the DC press and political so of the Democratic Party
is is a massive scandal. And it's one of the
reasons why presidents have a duty to dispose their medical records,
because of course it is relevant. And then it's the
same for senators. I think the only difference I would

(01:34:13):
put there is that the reason Americans concluded that Biden
had those problems was because they sow it for themselves.
And we've seen some public, publicly disturbing behavior from Fetterman.
There was that you know, video circle circulating of him
refusing to put on a seat belt and God and
giving aggressive about it. Yeah, but no, I agree, it's
it's a it's a huge issue, and I think you
can see major changes in fetterman.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
And I mean he fell asleep behind the wheel. He
fell asleep behind the wheel coming.

Speaker 7 (01:34:39):
Back and killed somebody and almost killed.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
Somebody, right not to mention like himself and his wife
who was in the back seat after insisting his staff
tried to insist on picking him up from the airport.

Speaker 3 (01:34:50):
You wouldn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
And so yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a
direct seems like a direct safety risk, but also obviously
has consequence in terms of a public policy.

Speaker 7 (01:35:01):
Yeah, I just like to see, like somebody of professionals,
like you know, examine him or I do think it
warrants you know. I don't think we should just forget
about it and be like, oh that's not a business
or we don't we're not capable. It is alarming, and
you can see it in some ways. And like I said,
the way he talks about Israel to me that in
and of itself is some sort of mental health problem.
Like it's one thing to say I support Israel, I

(01:35:22):
care deeply for the Palestinian civilians, this needs to end, whatever,
But he talks about it with this like glee that
Palestinians are being killed, not just a moss but in
the most horrific ways possible, and that to me is
mentally disturbing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
Let me see it gets your reaction to Simone Sanders
D three get guys put up on the screen. So
you know, she's gone from being a paid spokes political
spokesperson and operative to now a quote unquote journalist over
at MSNBC. And she's reacting to this, she says, I
don't know if you care about someone you know them,
personally airing your grievances in the page of the paper
just doesn't sit right with me. But to each their own,

(01:35:57):
I guess. And then she got pushed back from a
lot of people, but Josh Barrow in particular, she responded to,
is put D four up on the screen here as
well as she says, here's the thing, Josh, I'm consistent
and consistently I have the soul of giving people dignity
my fall up questions as did or did Sharif Street,
the chair of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania know about this?

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
Was Schumer aware?

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
Senate leadership alerted, I'm not saying no one should say anything. Frankly,
that's a wilful misread of my statement. Why I am saying,
is how one goes about it matters. Ben did his
job as a journalist. But the staff who seemed to
say their only recourse was Ben terras, I'm not buying it,
and I'm fine to have my opinion about that. Lastly,
not sure why you felt the need to attack me
because of what I used to do. Regardless, that says
more about you than me. So basically, she's saying, you

(01:36:37):
should have raised these concerns with Chuck Schumer. But if
the problems are as severe as is being depicted here,
there's no one in the Democratic caucus who doesn't know
there are issues, and none of them has chosen to
do anything or say anything because you know, it's a
Pennsylvania swing state seat, difficult to win, etc. So, and

(01:36:58):
he's more or less a reliable Democrat vote, so they
just kept their mouths shut.

Speaker 7 (01:37:04):
I think, I actually think there's a big problem with media.
You know, we've always had like people who were in
government sort of migrate sometimes to media. Bill Moyers was
the press secretary from Lyndon Johnson and became, you know,
a great television journalist. It's noting it can't happen. The
problem is with the dominance of cable news in twenty
four to seven coverage, that's pretty much all you have.
And then so many times people who have been political

(01:37:26):
hacks or parties spokespeople in apparatics or government officials end
up not just appearing on these networks but as hosts.
So now they're supposed to have a much different role.
But you know, you look at Jen Saki or Simone Sanders,
there's plenty of them on Fox. They're exactly this same.
I mean, I listened to Gen Saki. It sounds like
she's giving White House, you know, press prefings, and of
course Simone Sanders is there as a Democratic Party representative.

(01:37:49):
And the idea that if you have somebody like this
in your cauctus, it's fine to talk about it privately
but not publicly is such except it's such contempt for
the American people, you know, like we close ranks, we
cover things up, and especially after watching what happened with
Biden and how destroyed how you know, credibility that destroyed,
destroying that was for Democrats and the election in the media,
it's amazing they sell think that way.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
I know, it really is incredible, and it does speak
to you a problem specifically of like, you know, I
have no problem. I have a perspective. You have a perspective.
I think we're pretty upfront about that. But if you've
been paid to be, you know, an operative for a
specific political party and you're still close with the people
that are that's where you really start to have these

(01:38:31):
you know, these issues, and you know you see it
with the crossover with Fox News. You see it with
the crossover with MSNBC in particular, and I think it
comes out here. I mean the instinct to care, I
get it on like a human level, but the instinct
to think that like protecting the feelings of Joe Biden
was more important than defeating Trump if that's your view,
or you know, of advocating for issues that you're not

(01:38:54):
going to be able to if there's not a Democrat
in the White House, or just the interest of public,
the public having transpad garancy around what's going on with
the President of the United States, then I think you've
got your your priorities pretty screwed up for someone who
is holding themselves down as like a neutral journalist and analysts.

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):
At this point, I.

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):
Want to get to one last story here with with
you Glenn before we let you go, because I think
this is extraordinary, and you know, I'm just really interested
what you think about it. So Claudie Schenbaum, who's the
very popular president of Mexico, who Trump seems to for
whatever reason, kind of like we could put her image
up on the screen here. She recently confirmed that Trump
had generously offered to deploy US troops in Mexico in

(01:39:35):
order to combat the cartels. She said no, and told
him Mexico's sovereignty is inviolable and it is not for sale.
We will never accept a US military presence in our territory.
This is something that Trump and this is part of
Project twenty twenty five. A lot of Republicans have been
talking about, Hey, we're going to designate the cartels as
terrorists and then we're going to be able to use

(01:39:55):
these powers that presidents have grabbed Post nine to eleven
in order to basic wage war without having to get
permission of Congress. Trump also yesterday evening confirmed that he
had made this generous offer to Mexico. Let's go ahead
and take a listen to that.

Speaker 8 (01:40:10):
Mexico is saying that I offered, you said, US troops
into Mexico to.

Speaker 7 (01:40:15):
Take care of the cartels. He wants to know, isn't
that true? Do you think I'm going to.

Speaker 8 (01:40:19):
Answer that question.

Speaker 7 (01:40:22):
I will answer it. It's true, absolutely, Youcani, they should be.

Speaker 8 (01:40:29):
They are horrible people that have been killing people left
and right, that have been they made a fortunate selling
drugs and destroying our people. We lost three hundred thousand
people last year, two fitted all in drugs. The man knows, Yeah,
that's true. If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we
would be honored to go in and do it. I
told her that I would be honored to go in

(01:40:50):
and do it. The cartels had tried to destroy our country.
They're evil, and you know, we had three hundred thousand
people died last year from.

Speaker 2 (01:40:59):
End and all in all, what do you make of
all that? Glennon in particular, that connect to the War
on Terror.

Speaker 7 (01:41:06):
Is an obvious replica of the War on Terror. Right
that we've identify these groups, these kind of shady transnational
groups not part of the government, but that are in
certain countries, and then we just go in a way
to war supposedly on those groups. That ends up being
a war in that country. You know, and of course
it would have all the same failures. Have been extremely
well armed groups, like way more well armed than the Taliban,

(01:41:29):
and we couldn't win after fighting the Taliban for twenty years.
I think the broader issue here is this is a
difference with Trump point two point zero, is that he's
so high on his own victory, his stature in the world,
that when he speaks, he really does speak as if
he's kind of the leader of the world. Like he
talks about, you know, he said, I want this, I
want this, I want this, Panama, Greenland, ecent ter of Canada.

(01:41:50):
But also when he talks about like getting the war
in in Ukraine, he'll say, Boutin needs to change this.
I don't like this, and then he'll turn around and
tied the Ukrainians so that they're all competing for his approval.
And this mentality is really alarming, Like we want to
go do this in Mexico, they better say yes. And
I think the requirement of absolute loyalty to Donald Trump

(01:42:12):
inside the White House makes all of that so much
worse because he just gets that reinforced every day.

Speaker 2 (01:42:18):
Yeah, I think that's right. I also think the Supreme
Court immunity decision probably makes him feel more yolo as well. Certainly,
the efforts that were made in the off season to
strip away any of the factors of resistance that previously
stood in his way. I mean, that was their learning
from Trump one point zero was basically like, you know,

(01:42:41):
we didn't go far enough, we didn't indulge Trump's instincts enough.
And so the Republican movement, not just Trump, but the
Republican movement really set out on an explicit project to
make sure that would not be the case this time around.
And so this bombing the cartel's policy flows directly out

(01:43:01):
of that. And we could put this next piece up
on the screen as well, which is also extremely troubling.
So they are exploring labeling some suspected cartel and gang
members inside the US as quote unquote enemy combatants. Me
just read a little bit of this article. So they
say this is a possible way to detain these individuals
more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment.

(01:43:24):
According to multiple people with knowledge, the enemy combatant designation
could also be applied to suspected narco terras outside the US,
The people said, as a way to potentially give the
US justification to conduct lethal strikes against them. And so
this reads to me, Glenn as basically the courts have
struck down the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. I

(01:43:44):
do suspect when that ultimately gets to the Supreme Court,
they are probably also going to say this was an
improper invocation on the merits. But in addition, they've been
blocked from continuing to use this in various jurisdictions. The
Supreme Court has said, you have to to facilitate release,
you have to give some form of reasonable notice and
due process, even for the individuals who you want to

(01:44:07):
be able to sweep up in this. So they're saying, okay, well,
that pathway is maybe not really working out, so instead
we'll use this enemy combatants designation to do a different
and run around the Constitution and not provide any sort
of due process. Expanding on some of the actions that
were taken, you know, starting in the Bush administration and

(01:44:27):
all this of course comes in the context of their
analysis of who is a suspected alien enemy. Who is
a suspected Cartelo gang member could be something as simple
as like a tattoo or that you hail from a
certain part of Venezuela or they suspect you do.

Speaker 7 (01:44:45):
You know this, Crystal is why I have been so
nauseated and disgusted by that whole never Trump movement that
came out of the Bush Cheney faction that did so
much of the war on Terror is because so much
of what they claim to dislike about Trump, beyond like
the decorum and co departmental or ethical issues, is a
replica of exactly what they did. This all sounds so

(01:45:05):
familiar to me. I spent years and wrote books on
all these issues, you know. I remember David Frump had
to cover story in the Atlantic and it was something
a huge picture of Trump and it said like, this
is how authoritarianism is created. And I was like, is
that like a playbook from your knowledge in the Trump
in the Bush administration, because these are all the things
that you did. A lot of this did get some restraint,
but it is true. They're playing on a vulnerability in

(01:45:26):
American in American politics, which you referenced earlier, that the
Supreme Court becomes extra deferential to the president when he
has claims of national security and war and we're waging
you know, we're in a war. An enemy combatant is
who we're killing, because it basically eliminates all constraints and
it has all the same problems, all the same damages,
all the threats to liberty that the War on Terror had,

(01:45:48):
and if you add on top of that, like an
actual military action with our southern neighbor in Mexico that
they don't want, that would be one of the gravest
violations of sovereignty in many years.

Speaker 2 (01:45:59):
Yeah, that's right. What would it take for you to
forgive the number Trumper's Glenn? What would they need to do?

Speaker 7 (01:46:06):
You know, every religion, every ethical system teaches that a
prerequisite to forgiveness is an admission of guilt and an
apology for it. None of them have done that with
respect to these issues. I'm not saying they didn't say,
oh yeah, the Rack War was improperly executed, but with
all the whole other Guantanamo torture, et cetera, unitary president,
none that I know have acknowledged that or that they're

(01:46:27):
that they caused a lot of the problems. Now, so
I think forgiveness should be you know, kind of off limits.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
We need like a bush, then we needed like bushare
our Truth and Reconciliation Commission for them to come clean
admit their sins so we can move forward.

Speaker 7 (01:46:45):
We have to look forward, not backwards. So we never
got that.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (01:46:49):
Well, you know, next time, Next time, maybe, Glenn, anything
else that you're taking a look at that you want
people to be aware of today.

Speaker 7 (01:46:58):
No, I think you did a great job covering it
as you probab. I mean, we're going to find some
Glen issues and I think you did an excellent job
of doing that. So no, I feel like we cover.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
The gambit all right.

Speaker 3 (01:47:07):
Glenn, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
I really appreciate it's always fun getting your perspective and
just a pleasure, sir.

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:47:14):
You know I love the show, so I'm really happy
to be here. Thanks for asking my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:47:21):
So we are very excited to be joined by Anthony Klan,
who is an independent journalist. He's the editor of The
Clackson Down in Australia to break down some pretty stunning
election results there.

Speaker 3 (01:47:31):
Welcome Anthony.

Speaker 7 (01:47:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 12 (01:47:33):
Great to be with you.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
Yeah, of course, so a lot of people are saying
that a lot of echoes of what just happened in
Australia with what previously happened in Canada sort of a
come from behind in your case, really landslide victory for
the incumbent party, the center left party, big disappointment from
Conservatives who had previously seemed like they could surge and
pull off a victory. Not only that the leader of

(01:47:54):
the Conservative Party confusingly Liberal party in Australia. But in
any case, Peter Dunton, just like Pierre Pauliev in Canada,
actually lost his own seat. That's how bad the jobbing was.
So just set up the dynamics here and give us
a sort of top level view of what happened.

Speaker 12 (01:48:11):
Of course, so the election, the federal election. Australia's federal
election was held on Saturday. The leading the government of
the days the Labor Party, which is sort of center left.
It's been in power for three years. The center right Party,
much the same as Canada, was the opposition it came
in It was, it had quite strong, it was quite

(01:48:31):
strong in the polls. It was looking like it was
quite a good contender and perhaps even going to win
in around November December, about the time that Donald Trump
came to power, and very similar to us we saw
in Canada, which was also a center right opposition. The
party sort of slumped in the polls over the early
part of the year and particularly part of the campaign,

(01:48:53):
the electoral campaign the opposition he did particularly poorly. But
it was an absolute drubbing. It was blood on the streets.
It's an electoral wipeout. So there's sort of questions at
the moment in Australia regarding the future of this Conservative Party.
Obviously it's still going to be there, but it's the
number of seats has just been pretty much wiped out.
So we saw obviously, we saw in Canada the Conservative

(01:49:15):
Party there was unsuccessful and that the leader lost his seat,
same as in Australia. It's actually been quite a bit
worse than Canada. There was talk of the government, current
government in Australia being forced into a minority government rather
than a majority of government. But it's a majority government
and by a long way by about twenty seats, so

(01:49:37):
it's been quite quite the outcome.

Speaker 3 (01:49:39):
Let's go ahead, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:49:40):
Input off one up on the screen its ad tear
sheet of one of the articles your outlet wrote in
advance of the election. You said coalition as the opposition
party headed for disaster, worst result in eighty years.

Speaker 3 (01:49:51):
According to this Yugo Paul.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
Of course, US Americans love to think that everything is
about us, but it does seem like Trump's policies and
a backlash tos such did some reverberations in terms of
this election, So help us understand how significant those dynamics were.

Speaker 12 (01:50:06):
For sure, So there's quite a few issues at play here.
So it wasn't just this the Trump effects as they're
as they're calling it, but it definitely had a substantial impact.
And it's difficult to know exactly what caused people to
vote on the day, but clearly, I think over the
President Trump's first one hundred days since inauguration, you've seen
international markets, stock markets royaled a lot of uncertainty, and

(01:50:28):
in those situations, people have voted for the incumbency, voted
for the existing government whoever concerns with that sort of instability.
In the threats, it was also raised quite a lot
regarding President Trump's threats against Canada regarding tariffs. But also
you know, the sort of the talk around annexing and
that sort of thing made a lot of Australians a
bit nervous thinking, Look, you know, we're a very close

(01:50:49):
partner with the US, as is Canada. You know this
could be US, So I think that had quite a
big impact. It's also noteworthy the opposition leader here, he
was very keen towards the end of last year, sort
of set up to this sort of maga side of
things making America great again. He was sort of very
quite happy to be associated with that as the winds
were to his back and to Donald Trump's back. But

(01:51:10):
then as things sort of started to fall apart a
bit and the wheels sort of started to fall off
in the US regarding some of the more extreme statements
from the president, we've seen that our opposition party sort
of trying to backpedal a bit and sort of said, oh, look,
well no, we're different. But by then it was very
much in train. One particular noteworthy point during the campaign

(01:51:30):
was we had the opposition leader standing next to a
senator from his party and he sent it and said,
look i'm here.

Speaker 7 (01:51:35):
She said, i'm here.

Speaker 12 (01:51:36):
I want to make Australia great again. And that sort
of caused quite an issue because it was you know,
that's maga right there, and she immediately said, look, no,
it's not me. The media is obsessed with Donald Trump,
and within twenty four hours. There was a photo of
her with a Make America Great Again cap holding a
miniature Donald Trump that surfaced from a few months before.
So that was an interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:51:56):
Point to the point of who's obsessed with her with
that one? Well, it is interesting because you know, with Canada, obviously,
like you were saying, the threats have been really over,
you know, Canada and US huge trading partners, and especially
the threats to invade annex Canada as the fifty first state.
Really obviously Canadians were not thrilled about that, and anyone

(01:52:19):
who seemed like they were even tangentially associated with Trump
and his politics then sort of, you know, paid a
price for that. You know. I was listening to some
Australia voters talk about why they voted the way that
they did, and certainly the roiling of the markets and
the way that's affecting people's you know, uh, market accounts,
et cetera. That was certainly a part of it, but

(01:52:40):
it also just seemed like a general reaction against what
was perceived to be an extreme direction from the US.
I wonder if you could tease some of those things
out as well. What were some of the things that
Australians felt were coming from the US that were contrary
to their values.

Speaker 12 (01:52:54):
Yeah, for sure. Look, I think so of this this
conservative populism, and there was quite a it was going
it was taking off quite well. There's quite a bit
of it going on last year, but it's often it's
difficult to tell. The polls were reflecting that the public
wasn't as adverse to it as the actual electoral outcome states,
but I think people were increasingly uneasy about this sort

(01:53:17):
of this populism and this sort of extreme right wing,
extreme right wing activity, as well as there's a lot
of US style sort of disinformation groups, AstroTurf groups whatever
you want to call them, that are sort of set
up and pretend to be grassroots movements of ordinary Australians,
when in fact they're sort of run by fossil fuels
entities and sort of bad actors pretending to be someone

(01:53:39):
there not. So we've seen a lot of that surfacing
in Australia the past twelve months particularly, and I think
people have become increasingly aware of that. And we obviously
have much smaller market in Australia, so when you have
this sort of activity happening it's easier when it is
called out. It's easier for the broader public to see
what's going on. Because we're much smaller, there's many fewer
moving parts. So I think a lot of that's played

(01:54:00):
a part as well. People have looked at some of
the issues in Australia. We have very similar issues going
on as on the East coast of the US there
in particularly regarding offshore wind turbines. Now quite a few
studies and experts have been looking into this area. We're
finding a lot of disinformation groups are AstroTurf groups in
the US that have sort of been pretending to be
environmental groups but are actually fossil fueled back fighting against

(01:54:22):
these offshore wind turbines, obviously because fossil fuels want to
continue their business model. A lot of those same groups,
same entities, and same methods are being used on the
East coast of Australia. So I think a lot more
people were sort of waking up to that and combining
those two together, sort of recoiled somewhat and voted for
the existing government.

Speaker 2 (01:54:41):
You know, one of the things that we've been trying
to wrap our heads around here is how much sort
of a revocable damage. Trump is doing it. It's one
thing the trade war. Okay, a new president can come in,
they can change the policy, etc. But Mark Carney in
his victory speech really spoke about a sense of real
betray rail and a sense that even if the particular

(01:55:04):
politician and the White House changes or the policy changes,
that there's been a breach in the relationship that is
going to cause Canada to go in another direction sort
of regardless of what happens from here on out. And
I was just wondering what the view is from Australia
about the US and whether there's been sort of an
aravocable change in the way that the US is viewed

(01:55:24):
by Australians.

Speaker 7 (01:55:27):
I think it's much less.

Speaker 12 (01:55:29):
It's not as as hectically viewed as the Canadians have
viewed it. Obviously, it's been a bit of a there's
been a very different relationship between the way that the
President has treated Canada and Australia, at least vocally so far.
I think the Australian public and in the Australian authorities
is sort of thinking, hang on, we need to reconsider
a bit our position. We've sort of relied extremely heavily

(01:55:49):
on the US as a security partner and partner and
that sort of thing. I think the relationship will remain regardless.
It's strong, it's you know, it's not going anywhere. But
I think it's sort of made people think a little
bit hang on, maybe we should stand on our own
two feet a little bit more, which you know, to
some degree that's obviously a good thing. And look, I
don't think there's any sort of terminal, long term damage
done there. It's just made people sort of wake up

(01:56:11):
a little bit there.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):
And what is what was the view of Anthony albany
c prior to this election? What are people's sense of
his governance?

Speaker 12 (01:56:21):
So he was swept to power, came to power last
three years ago. We have three year terms, which is
quite unusual on the international stage, but three year terms.
He came to power. It had been nine years of
the Conservative government in power before then. Now they'd sort of,
as many many governments do, they've fallen into the trap
of cronyism and then corruption in parts. And during that period, interestingly,

(01:56:42):
Australia fell further towards corruption than any other OECD nation
according to Transparency International. Over that nine year period, and
that's with the exception of Hungary, with which Australia tired,
So it's not very well known. But during that period
we're obviously fairly high base. But we fell we fell
down the list a substantial and a lot of that
was due to Australia not having a National Integrity Commission,

(01:57:04):
being a national body that oversees corruption or alleged corruption
involving politicians. So the Albanezy government he came to power,
he promised this brand new National Anti Corruption Commission that
was going to set up and have transparent hearings and
all the rest of it to hold government officials to account. Now,
he brought one of these bodies in, but they sort

(01:57:24):
of kneecapped it behind the scenes and made it have
actions all in secret. Basically, well it's hearings in secret,
so you don't know what it's doing. And it's been
pretty much a major flop and it's been criticized from
all sides. So I think a lot of people were
very disappointed in that. He sort of made a lot
of promises for his first term he didn't come through with.
It was all about transparency and accountability, but as soon

(01:57:45):
as he got in that all went out the window.
But I think what's happened over the past six months,
with what's happened in the US and the Trump factor,
that people have thought, well, look, you know, we'll kind
of forget about that for now. We've got bigger issues.
We don't want this conservative government coming in. And it's
basically a few issues with the Conservative government. They're sort of,
as the public's pointed out, they behind in the Times,

(01:58:05):
looking to rewind Australia a little bit. Rather than embracing
renewable energy, of which we have plenty plenty of sun
and wind, they were looking at actually introducing nuclear power
in Australia for the first time, despite the fact that
it was going to cost between two and five times
as much for no real reason. It was just sort
of an ideological issue. So people were sort of not

(01:58:25):
particularly happy about that. But so it wasn't a good
opposition for starters, but the Trump effect obviously played a
pretty big role.

Speaker 2 (01:58:33):
Yeah, and I think I read what Duntin had said
something about having a nuclear reactor in his writing that
his opponent sees done and how long he had held
that seat for what twenty four years something like that.

Speaker 12 (01:58:44):
That's right, yeah, more than two decades, and it had
been on a small margin. He had by about one
point four percent I believe, the seat of Dixon in Brisbane,
which is halfway up the Australian coast. So there were
a few questions as to whether he was going to
hold that seat, but he's lost it quite convincingly, of
about six percent swinging against him. Now, this issue with
the nuclear reactors was something that's picked up We picked

(01:59:05):
up on quite early on in the piece, and it
was coming from a lot of the same actors, the
fossil fuels groups. One of these in particular in Australia
is called the Institute of Public Affairs. Now it's sort
of a proxy almost for fossil fuels interests, and this
is where Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, launched his nuclear
reactive policy about eighteen months ago. So he actually launched

(01:59:26):
at this fossil fuels lobby group and you're looking at
these things of the small modular nuclear reactors that he
was spooking. They don't actually exist anywhere in the world
in a commercial basis, and they were going to cost
about six times more than normal electricity anyway. So it
was pie in the sky sort of stuff, and it
was seen by many experts as just the way of
prolonging fossil fuels. So obviously they opened themselves up to

(01:59:47):
this whole huge issue of nuclear power in Australia. And
beyond the economics of it, you've got the issue of
we haven't had nuclear power before. So a lot of
people sort of a bit uneasy about the idea, and
it brings up the whole spectrum of nuclear energy. And
obviously he left himself open there and the question was, hey, look,
you know, would you have a reactor in your in
your backyard and your electorate? He said, of course. And

(02:00:08):
obviously people in these electorates were so.

Speaker 2 (02:00:10):
Keen about that, they were not too excited about that idea.
Last question for you, how did some of these independent
movements like the Teals, how did they play into these
election results?

Speaker 12 (02:00:21):
Yes, so Australia has much the same as the US,
two major parties, not quite as not quite as tight
in as the US, but we have two major parties.
Last election, there's a group of independents that was that
came about the look they'll call the community two hundred independents. Basically,
fundraising model was set up to get independence into government

(02:00:42):
because usually you've got all the same actors, the fossil fuels,
the big banks, et cetera. They are funding the two
major parties. So this is sort of a new model
that came in and they were very successful and they
called it the Teal Wave. Last time, around half a
dozen and more independence came into power. This time around,
those same independents are there. There's been a landslo to
the ALP to the existing government which is center left.

(02:01:04):
They have a majority of power, but the independence from
last time, the Till Wave, is still there. Most of
those people, if not all of them, are back in again,
as well as a couple of other gains, and that's
more of a long term strategy to get more independence
into into government into Australian government, with the idea being
there's less power to the original backers, the original donors
of the two major parties.

Speaker 3 (02:01:23):
Amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:01:23):
Well, thank you Anthony so much for joining us and
helping us to understand what's going on there. Tell people
where they can find you and follow your work.

Speaker 12 (02:01:29):
Oh thank you. You can find us at the Clackson
k l A XO N dot com dot au and
we're an investigative news site covering all the other the
stories that the other majors aren't.

Speaker 2 (02:01:39):
Thank you, fantastic, great to meet you, and thank you
again for joining us.

Speaker 12 (02:01:44):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
All right, guys, that does it for today's global edition
of Breaking Points. Thank you so much for joining us,
and I just want to give a shout out to
everybody who's been signing up as a Premium member. We've
had a huge surge of support, think attributable to know
stitment around the Friday Show and just all that's going
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So thank you so much for supporting us. It makes
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